[NaNoWriMo] Delphini Sanctimonia

[FinnKaenbyou]

Welp, I've finally convinced myself to start uploading this somewhere rather than keeping it to myself in the miniscule (and frankly unrealistic) hope it'd be worth publishing. It's not technically Touhou, but given that it stars a character I've used in plenty of Touhou fics I'm hoping it's okay to let things slip a little.

So yeah, first 5k for now. Expect sloppiness and lousy writing because, well, NaNoWriMo. :V

-----

All things considered, bottles had a pretty rough time.

A bottle was hardly the most creative invention of all. It stored drinks and other liquids, and that was about it. Thus, when people emptied bottles of their contents, they typically couldn?t think of much to do with them other than throw them away and leave someone else to deal with the remains.

She was unfamiliar with the phrase ?passing the buck?, but she would have found it relevant given the situation. Especially since the buck stopped here more often than it did in most places.

The sea was supposed to be a beautiful home for the marine life of the region, not some sort of glorified trash dump. But the bottle bobbing along in the water towards her right now was definitely not a fish. Unless this genetic engineering the humans had been partaking in was much more severe than she?d thought, but somehow that seemed unlikely.

She didn?t realise how long she?d spent watching it until the bottle tapped against her leg. She flinched, almost knocking herself off the tiny rock she was using as a perch. So much swimming could fatigue just about anyone, so she?d given herself a break.

?sides, I?m not even on the job yet.

Technically, she was meant to be revising along with the other cadets for the final exams coming up shortly. In a few days, she?d have to take all the knowledge she?d picked up over the last sixteen years of training and find a way to express it on a few sheets of paper. Then at last she could wear the dark blue robes of the Delphini Sanctimonia, that outfit that she?d been eyeing up every time a member of the order gave her an opportunity to sit and stare. It wasn?t even the robe itself that meant something to her - it was what it symbolised, the responsibility of the wearer and their duty to keep the seas from being polluted by human filth.

As of the last hundred years or so, this filth now included such terrifying objects as plastic bottles.

She pulled the bottle out of the water, taking no interest in the colourful label that had somehow survived the journey. An ordained member of the Del-Sancti would have taken this time to reach down to one of the vials at their waist, pour a few grains of puresalt on it, and given themselves a pat on the back as the otherwise troublesome bottle was broken down into its base materials.

No such luck for her. She was still dressed in the almost military uniform of the cadet - a dark grey fabric that covered her and did very little else. If she?d worn it near the human coast, people would have likely thought it was one of their so-called swimsuits.

Of course, if she were to come to shore like this there would be several other points which caught far more attention than her choice of clothing. They would be looking at the long, silver hair, an unnatural colour for any human being, let alone one who looked as young as she did. They?d look into her dark blue eyes for a few moments, looking for an explanation, but she would offer them nothing.

She most likely wouldn?t need to - the onlookers? eyes would catch sight of her most damning feature long before she could make an escape. Besides the silver hair, she looked almost human - ten fingers, ten toes, no obvious disfigurement or disability. It was almost possible to pass her off as an eccentric, if charming girl and leave it that.

Except for the fin, anyway.

The Del-Sancti had various powers, but full-blown human transformation was not one of them. This was as close as they would likely ever get to it, and it was almost perfect - but the dark grey fin poking out of her back was something of a fatal flaw in the disguise. The order had long-since decided that they would avoid human contact for this reason, and any absolutely necessary visitors to the human world would need to wear thick, heavy clothing within which to hide their fin. (This duty was doubly unpopular in the summer, when the unlucky agent tasked with recon in a local aquarium would stick out for their outfit almost as much as they would have for the fin, never mind the fact they may as well have been melting.)

Anyway, that was well out of her job description. She?d need to be a member of the order for years to be trusted with the delicate job of public relations, and she?d been a member for about minus-two days. Her duties consisted of studying, studying some more, maybe helping some of the real Del-Sancti members with their paperwork, and getting back to that studying she was meant to be doing. Work was life, and life was work, so it was probably a good thing that she found it immensely enjoyable in and of itself. There were horror stories still being passed around in the academy about people just snapping after so long, breaking down into inconsolable wrecks if someone so much as placed a crumpled piece of paper in front of them. It was an urban myth passed around for decades, and by now even the teachers of the academy had started to play along, passing on the story with more exaggeration and flamboyance than any of their pupils.

Apparently, plastic bottles were even worse on their minds than paper, capable of producing blind rages that usually ended in body counts and incarceration. She pondered bringing the bottle into class tomorrow and asking if she could present it to the crazy guy as ?an experiment?. Even if her inquisitive nature didn?t earn her any extra marks, it would probably get a few laughs out of the tutor.

She soon thought better of it. The question would inevitably come up about where she?d found the bottle, and then there would inevitably be a lecture about how she was disgracing the order with her recklessness and how if there happened to be a fishing boat passing by they?d all be in grave danger and blah, blah, blah. She was willing to accept that discovery by humanity was bad, but the way they smothered cadets into never leaving the confines of the Sanctuary until they?d proven themselves worthy was just too much for her to deal with. She clearly wasn?t alone in this, given that the cadets had long since constructed a supposedly secret exit out into the open sea without passing through the security of the front entrance.

?Supposedly? was the key word there - several students had been caught using it, but no effort had been made by the Del-Sancti to block off the exit. So basically, the lesson they seemed to be getting across was ?you?re allowed to leave, but only if no-one catches you doing it?. It was reinforcing the need for secrecy in a strange, twisted way.

So even something as simple as a bottle from the surface would be enough to give her away. No-one ever got seriously punished for it, but she didn?t feel like sitting through another lecture from the Sensei. That wasn?t her actual name, nor her title, but as the head of the branch she had enough authority to insist everyone called her it. Embracing the local culture was one thing, but from the way she decorated and taught the woman seemed to think she was a samurai that had been born in the wrong age. And gender. And race.

And what do I get to settle for? Sango. That doesn?t sound anywhere near as cool.

The Del-Sancti had a tradition with naming - they?d choose names for their children that suited the human realms which they surveyed. Being based off the coast of Japan, the branch she frequented had residents with almost exclusively Japanese names, save a few foreigners who had names all over the map. The name Sango had apparently been a moment of genius on the part of her parents, thinking that it would be clever to name their daughter after coral.

It wasn?t. They had failed to take into consideration that every other parent in the Del-Sancti would have the same idea, and it lead to a generation where every son or daughter seemed to have a name referring to a fish or a river or something along those lines. Needless to say, the next generation would be getting deliberately bland names to avoid this situation repeating itself.

The sun began to set in the distance. Already the water beneath her started to grow colder, and her bare legs shivered slightly in the water. Sango didn?t want to leave it too long before she started on the return trip - showing up from a sneak visit outside was bad enough without overrunning curfew as well. She decided to take the bottle with her, and drop it off somewhere where the ?qualified professionals? would be able to deal with it.

She lowered herself into the water, taking a few deep breaths. About the only accessory that she?d managed to acquire during her time in the academy was a handmade red belt made of worn fabric. It was deliberately similar to the sort of belt worn by the order, where the colour of the belt indicated your rank. Red may have been the lowest rank, but even an initiate was higher than Sango right now - she didn?t have the right to wear any colour of belt. She?d almost been stopped for it once in a corridor by a stern lecturer whose face she didn?t recognise, but a quickly stuttered explanation along the lines of ?getting it fitted for when I graduate? saved her from the firing squad.

She slipped the bottle in beneath her belt, as it clung tightly to her waist. The chill of the water numbed the sensation from the bottle considerably, to the point where Sango almost felt like it wasn?t there. Taking a final deep breath, she plunged into the water, descending straight downward into the murky depths.

It was at that point that Sango?s body underwent a drastic change. In fact, change was almost the wrong word for it, given that it implied a transition between the two states, but the transformation was practically instant. One moment, she?d been a (nearly) human-looking girl; the next, she was impossible to tell apart from the mundane dolphins that travelled these waters.

The order didn?t call themselves the Dolphins of Purity for nothing, after all.

-----

The Del-Sancti?s history was centuries old, and there was only a vague understanding of its origins now in these days where magic had all but vanished from the world. The original tale, though, was well documented enough that anyone with a few books on Greek history could learn about the beginning of the order.

The first members of the Delphini Sanctimonia hailed back from the times of Ancient Greece, and back then they had simply been human sailors eager to make a quick penny whenever the opportunity appeared. One day, a young and beautiful man made his way past them, and thinking that he was a prince of some sort they kidnapped him at took him far out to sea in the hopes of receiving a glorious ransom from his family. The man seemed unfazed by the entire ordeal, matter-of-factly telling his kidnappers they were mistaken, but obviously no-one bought his story. With robes and looks that fine, what else could he be but a prince?

The answer, it turned out, was a god. Namely, Dionysus, the god of merriment and mischief. It quickly became obvious that being kidnapped had a habit of killing off his sense of humour, and he paid back the kidnappers with a display of divine power that shook them to the core.

It began with a simple nuisance; every attempt to tie him down failed miserably. From there, things grew more abstract and frightening - the sea around the ship rippled in all directions, and dozens of vines emerged from beneath the surface to pin it in place. As a god of merriment, Dionysus had chosen to use grape vines for the deed, but his victims were too busy panicking to appreciate the gesture.

Finally, as a finishing touch, Dionysus took on the form of a lion and charged at any sailor unlucky enough to be close by. By this point no man could claim he was unafraid, and one by one they jumped into the open sea, preferring their chances against the wild and ravaging seas better than against a god in human form.

The god of merriment had a strange sense of humour, though, as was typical of the Greek gods. Rather than leaving his kidnappers to drown, he offered them something of a mercy, and with a swing of his hand transformed them from their human forms into dolphins, with a little extra magical punch for no reason other than his own personal amusement. The newly-reborn sailors continued to flee on instinct, and it was only after a few years of ordinary dolphin life that they started to realise that they were far different from their mundane equivalents.

First of all, they could hold their breath for far longer than a regular dolphin. Most ordinary specimens wouldn?t last longer than ten, fifteen minutes at the most without needing to come up for air, but those touched by Dionysus could stay under for hours without any ill effects. Secondly - and this was an ability that they didn?t discover for a long while - they had the ability to change into a humanoid form, though the fins protruding from their backs served as ever-present reminders that they would never pass for human. They started to refer to themselves as the Delphi, a nod to the mystical oracles of the era.

Separate from the society formed on land, the charmed sailors then learned that the god had granted them magical powers beyond belief. They formed their own city on the bottom of the Aegean Sea, and formed their own community to mirror that they?d had to leave behind. The wisest and most able of them formed the Council of the Delphi, charged with keeping order as their influence slowly grew along the sea floor beyond the sight of humanity. They indulged in the arts, and taking the sea itself as their muse they wrote about the beauty of the ocean with a wit they had never possessed as humans.

Somewhere, these sonnets and poems shifted from pieces of literary art to a series of moral laws to follow. The purity and brilliance of the sea was no longer something to admire and look upon with pride; it was something to protect at all costs. Thus the Delphini Sanctimonia was born, tasking itself with the defense of all the waters of the world from whatever threatened them. The order began to branch out from their home base, spreading across the four corners of the world, all the while keeping themselves out of the public eye. They began working on various magical powers, focused on cleansing and removing any impurities from the water around them. For a while, they possessed enough strength to even be a potential threat to the humans on the surface.

That was before the gods began to die.

No-one knew when it began, in particular, but it most likely coincided with the loss of belief in the old gods and movement towards those of the modern age. As belief in deities such as Dionysus faded, so too did the powers of the Delphi. All they retained were their hard-earned magics of purification and a few other minor charms; the days of creating gold from lead and making flowers bloom with a touch were long gone. As if to take advantage of the loss, humanity?s respect for the seas took a nosedive soon afterward, and the Del-Sancti had to take on a larger workload with a weaker workforce. No longer was the duty left to the young and eager; every hand that was able needed to be called upon, or the oceans would be polluted and corrupted for sure.

Fast forward to Sango?s time, and the Del-Sancti was at the forefront of a losing battle. Human technology was advancing at a faster rate than ever before, and their rates of pollution grew almost exponentially. Various disasters occurred that no member of the Del-Sancti was strong enough to truly repair - oil spills, detonations, mass hunting - and it became necessary to bring younger and younger cadets into the forefront in order to hold off disaster. If she had been born a few centuries earlier, Sango would have needed to undergo another ten years of training before the academy considered her ready to be an initiate.

But these were dark times, and the Council of Delphi were ready to accept all the help they could get.

-----

It grew dark quickly. The sun?s rays never made it to this depth even on the brightest of days, so all that greeted Sango as she continued to sink was a curtain of black that enveloped her completely. Only the occasional bubble rising up from beneath her kept her informed that she was indeed moving in the right direction - straight down. The bottle and belt were now wrapped around her tail, waving up and down with every kick.

The dolphin closed her eyes for a moment, focusing. This was where one of the last charms the Delphi had managed to hold on to came in handy. These spells were all basic enough that they needed no chant or incantation - almost all magic that powerful had been long since lost.

No-one was around to see it, but there was a faint hum as Sango?s body began to glow. The Delphi had invented this technique long beforehand in order to make their way through the dark trenches of the seas, and it still worked to this day. A relief, because otherwise moving to and from headquarters would be a logistical nightmare. Though her vision was far from perfect, it was easy now for Sango to travel on to the sea floor without bumping into any of the fish that still managed to survive at this depth.

The Far East Branch of Del-Sancti was built at the bottom of a sea that humans had apparently failed to decide on a name for. Some called it the Sea of Japan, but others insisted on calling it simply the East Sea because it was surrounded by various other countries. The Del-Sancti agreed, but for different reasons - the name ?Sea of Japan? implied that Japan owned the waters themselves, and if there was anything that the Council couldn?t stand it was humans claiming to own their territory.

The deepest point in this sea took Sango a good half hour of swimming to reach. The water pressure would have long since killed a man as she continued to dive down, but the Delphi were physically capable of surviving at greater depths than most humans even considered possible. They would undoubtedly make excellent test subjects for any scientist who happened to catch one - yet another reason to stay out of the public eye.

At last, Sango found herself at the bottom of the basin. By now there was no marine life to be seen at all, save the occasional plant that managed to survive in spite of the lack of sunlight. It was deathly quiet here, without even the rippling waves or the ocean currents to break the silence. Sango moved across the seabed gracefully, ignoring the eerie tone of the surrounding waters - after all, she?d known this as her home from birth, so it was hardly anything new to her.

The closest thing she had to a landmark around here was the occasional rock in a memorable shape. She?d devised a map in her head, marking it with the stones as guidelines to keep it from being bland and impossible to navigate. As she passed the cross-shaped rock to her left, she was certain now she was going the right direction.

After another minute or two of swimming, the shelf started to appear in the distance, and a small hole was visible a few feet from the floor. The Del-Sancti knew better than to leave their bases available for anyone to see if they made it to this depth - to that extent, at least, they?d planned for the revolutions in human technology. The hole was only just large enough for a dolphin to pass through - maybe a human would be able to make their way in, but not with all the bulky, high-tech equipment that they?d need just to survive this far underwater.

Sango slipped through the gap with ease, being slightly smaller than the average Delphi. There were horror stories about people getting trapped in the hole for hours, but once again that was probably to scare students into keeping to the staple diet. In fact, horror stories seemed to be the academy?s favourite method of education, ahead of actual teaching.

The cavern within only stayed cramped for a few feet, quickly expanding in all directions to reveal a massive space within. Square in the middle of the clearing stood a massive mechanical structure, almost spherical in shape but cut off by the cavern floor. It looked similar to the crystal balls of old, but on a scale that would make any self-proclaimed psychic flinch. The glass plating had been magically reinforced, both to fend off the unrelenting water pressure and to prevent anyone from breaking in. Along the top wall, various high-powered lights served to replace the sun, growing brighter and dimmer in sync with it. They?d faded into the pale light of the evening, but it was still easily bright enough to see even from outside the dome.

Within the orb, a city had been built in the old fashions of Greece - houses that didn?t consist of more than one or two rooms, lined up alongside one another and following whatever path the ground beneath them happened to take. They were more carefully constructed than the homes of the Greeks, but there was little in terms of decoration or flamboyance. The highest-ranking members of the order received their own private residences, but these were only larger for the sake of convincing Initiates to work for promotions and earn a residence that wasn?t six inches shorter than they were.

By far, though, the largest building held within the sphere was the academy. It served multiple purposes - it taught the young cadets of the Del-Sancti how to do their jobs, and it also worked to control the members currently on duty and hand out orders. It could, if a pressing matter arose, call all able hands to act against a pressing disaster, but beyond that each Delphi was assigned an area to look over and keep pure. More qualified and capable members, the Journeymen and the Sages, would be assigned areas where humans saw it fit to dump more of their waste than usual, while Initiates were typically tasked with minor areas until they proved themselves in an emergency.

Running all of this was the branch?s Sen- no, Dean! Her title was the Dean of the branch, but her insistence on being called something more fitting to the culture (as she had termed it during a meeting of local authorities) had worked its way so far into Sango?s mind she found herself calling the woman Sensei even while no-one was looking. Shifting back into her human form, she took a moment to slap herself back into sense.

The front entrance was incredibly difficult to miss - a gate at the front of the sphere, slightly jarring given how technologically advanced it was compared to the buildings it concealed. It contained several chambers, and served as an airlock so that people could leave and enter without flooding the airtight dome. More importantly to Sango, it was heavily guarded at all times, and therefore was not an option to her if she wanted to stay in the academy?s good books up until the exam. She dispelled her light charm - there was no need for it now, and an unexplained light was certain to attract attention.

This was where a little bit of student ingenuity played its part. Rather than taking the blatantly obvious front entrance, Sango instead swam around the dome, using the rocks along the sides of the cavern to stay out of sight. No-one was even sure if the outside of the construct was being watched, but it was better safe than sorry. She pulled around to the right side of the dome, keeping herself pressed against the rocks as she moved along.

Eventually, she found herself next to a patch of ground that was slightly off-colour compared to its neighbours. She gripped at the pebble lying in the middle of the odd-shaded block, pulling it upwards knowing full well that it was in fact a handle. The ?ground? rose out in a neatly-cut square, giving Sango more than enough room to sneak inside - of course, replacing the block after she?d entered.

From there, it was only a few feet to make her way beneath the structure before the hidden pathway turned abruptly upwards, coming to an end with another fake block above her head. This one, though, was designed to be indistinguishable from the floor tiles of the average living quarters. The entire mechanism was ingenious, developed by a cadet who?d since become a Journeyman of some repute.

Pushing up the block, Sango was relieved to feel the sudden chill of a wet hand exposed to air. She placed it to her side, lifting her whole body out of the water and taking a moment to relax. A set of towels were provided by the students who frequently used this exit - walking around while soaking wet had a strange habit of giving away you?d been out for a swim. She rubbed herself down, making sure to replace the block before she made her way out of the ?house? - it technically belonged to a cadet now, but he?d been convinced to bunk along with a classmate with the promise of free meal tickets every day until graduation.

It was only after she surfaced that Sango remembered about the bottle she?d brought down with her from the surface. It was now full to the brim with sea water thanks to its former owner not even having the decency to keep its cap alongside it. Sango became quickly aware that her plan of leaving this for an Initiate to solve had several dozen flaws.

She couldn?t leave it in here - this building was only visited by cadets, and none of them would be willing to take the risk of passing it on either. And again, she couldn?t hand it in in person without revealing she?d been out of the branch and having her ear talked off by the scary lady with the sword. Leaving it on the academy doorstep was an option, but that was a good long walk from here, and the odds of her bumping into someone were too high to be worth risking.

Eh. Guess I?ll just take care of it in the morning, then.

Sango yawned, as suddenly a good half-hour?s worth of exercise started to have its effect on her. Her residence wasn?t far from here, and she?d long since discovered a path that avoided the occasional sentry that walked the streets pre-curfew. Stepping out, she closed the door behind her as quietly as she could and started on the covert route back home.

It was a path she?d devoted to memory, and for good reason - the cadet-sized cubicles were built to a universal standard, and so were painfully identical. More than once Sango had been woken up from a long sleep by a fellow classmate who?d forgotten where their house was and needed a place to crash for the night. She?d oblige them, at the low, low price of a single meal ticket for the whole night. (Cadets didn?t usually own enough for this sort of trade, but meal tickets were the unspoken currency of the undergraduate.)

Sango had no such trouble tonight, finding her way to her own residence unseen. The door was unlocked; indeed, there was no sign of a potential lock on it in the first place. There was a strong sense of trust within the Del-Sancti, and besides that pretty much no-one owned anything worth stealing. She closed the door behind her, placing the bottle in front of the door so she wouldn?t forget about it later.

Sango?s home was bland enough to almost be an offense to the written language if given description. It was a dank, windowless abode, with a panel installed in the middle to give the illusion of two distinct rooms. One side was for cadets to use as a makeshift bathroom, and the other was for sleeping and little else. There was no room for trinkets, accessories, or toys - you had an entire sea to enjoy while you were working on the job, after all. The academy library offered excellent variety in Delphini literature - which was to say that they?d exhausted every possible way to talk about how beautiful the sea was and how it was a valiant and just cause to defend it. Maybe some people found pleasure in that, but Sango had never been of the poetic sort.

Still, even in these cramped and difficult circumstances, cadets rarely succumbed to depression or boredom. Most of them were busy dealing with the anticipation that came with the honour of joining the Del-Sancti, receiving their own portion of the sea to take as their own and watch over. And given that Initiates only had to cover tiny, slow areas, they had more than enough time to frolic in the seas and enjoy the life their mundane dolphin counterparts always lived.

Sango shared in that instinct, but for her it was only secondary. As she lay herself down on the simplistic bed that had been set out for her, her thoughts turned to the upcoming examinations, the ones that would test everything she?d learned in the last sixteen years. If - no, when - she emerged triumphant from the exam, she would finally be awarded the title of Initiate, and she would exchange this ragged makeshift belt of hers with the real thing.

She slipped into slumber with a smile on her face.

Initiate?s only the beginning. I?m gonna make it all the way to the top.

[Drake]

I'm gonna become Hokage someday!

No I'm kidding, this is pretty good. Always welcome for more Sango.

Phweelieve it! 8D

[Esifex]

 >Sensei
 >Scary lady with the sword
 >Lectures
 >Scolding


Ruro's in your story, isn't she? :3

oh god i swear that was not what i had planned

dammit ruro get out of my head

OUT

[ruro]Never~[/ruro]

[FinnKaenbyou]

Morning came, as it always did, with a painful ringing in Sango?s ears.

The Del-Sancti valued punctuality as one of its highest virtues, and they had devised very effective measures to ensure no-one was caught sleeping in. These measures consisted of small klaxons installed in every residence, designed to wake up their inhabitant at the same time every morning. The curfew was technically optional, but that klaxon would go how no matter how little sleep you?d had the night before, so even the most rebellious of the cadets had learned the importance of a good night?s rest.

By the time Sango had hauled her arms up in a vain attempt to cover her ears, she was already wide awake. Maybe it was an unpleasant method, but she definitely couldn?t argue with its effectiveness. She pulled herself to her feet, leaving the covers ruffled and undone. Technically, she was supposed to line her bedcovers up correctly the instant she woke up - because tidiness was the only virtue the Del-Sancti placed above punctuality - but there was hardly going to be a sentry walking around the residential area poking open every door to see if the cadets had been good little kids and cleaned up after themselves.

Besides, time she spent being pedantic about these bedsheets was time she could be using to get to the academy. This was one of the most important times of the day to a recruit - the much-awaited breakfast, and a chance to make use of the meal tickets everyone was so eager to get their hands on. It wasn?t rationing, per se, but there was only so much food that wasn?t grey, tasteless mush, and meal tickets gave you the chance to eat something that wasn?t pureed beyond recognition.

Sango afforded herself a quick trip to the bathroom to take care of base urges and get herself ready for the day. Though the toilets worked fine (save the fact that they tended to rattle as they flushed) there was no real concept of a sink in the land of the Delphi. The best comparison was a fountain-like monument alongside the toilet, which the user was basically expected to take water from and clean themselves with. Of course, coming into class with a dirty face was yet another way for a cadet to earn a one-way trip to the Dean?s office. A quick wash was more than enough to get her in good shape for the oncoming day, and as soon as she dried herself off she made for the door.

The bottle from the day before blocked her path, and Sango hurriedly placed it around her belt again. No-one would notice it in the crowd, and she could probably drop it somewhere in the mess hall without being tracked. Tightening the belt, she opened up the door and made her way towards the academy.

She was by no means the first cadet in the stampede towards the academy, but she?d managed to make her way to the front of the pack. The klaxons continued for a few minutes before fading to silence. Their only other use was to gain the attention of cadets in case of emergencies that needed every hand the branch could offer. There was no real push to get any lazy students out of bed - missing breakfast was its own punishment more often than not.

Caught in the swarm of hungry cadets, Sango moved forward along with the group in order to avoid being trampled on. There were perhaps a hundred recruits currently in training at the academy, and of them only about a dozen were ready to be taken as Initiates. The age difference between the cadets was astounding, to the point where the tallest of the trainees was well over twice the height of the shortest. The task of not stepping on someone?s foot was one that the Delphi had been trained in extensively after years of huddling in these groups, though the occasional yelp was enough to remind Sango that they hadn?t perfected the art.

In a remarkable display of grace, none of the cadets were trampled to death in their trip to the academy. The building was far more artistic and grand than the residences, large enough to fit the entire population of the branch with little trouble. It had been designed in the image of the structures on ancient Greece out of nostalgia, back in the days when the Delphi could produce the materials necessary with little trouble. Murals had been drawn on the front wall, displaying mystical sea creatures and the most beautiful fish the sea had to offer. Now, though, the marble that formed the building?s exterior was beginning to show the first signs of age, the occasional chip in the wall serving to kill off the sense of grandeur. Still, in comparison to the rickety houses the cadets called home, the academy was both better looking and more comfortable, to the point where several students had been caught sleeping in classrooms to be closer to the mess hall when morning arrived.

The building?s interior was much more business-like and to the point. The stairs and hallways were made of simple stone, though they?d suffered the effects of time almost as badly as the extravagant designs on the outside. There was no indication of what was where, because once again students were expected to remember this on their own. No-one ever forgot where the mess hall was, though, and the mass of students began to pick up pace as they entered the open double-doors and started down the first corridor to the left. Now the act of not killing someone by accident became even harder, because the group were cramped together in a hallway only wide enough to fit two people at a time.

Sango quickly found herself pressed against a wall by one of the larger cadets, slowing her down immensely. She caught an excited glint in his eyes as he pressed on, holding her back all the while. It was hardly an uncommon occurance, but one that left many an inexperienced cadet to munch quietly on goop during breakfast. Sango, though, was more knowledgeable when it came to dealing with the crowd, and responded in the only way she knew how.

Going against everything her intuition told her, she reached out to the hand pinning her to the wall and pulled it towards her, stepping backwards into the crowd all the while. The larger recruit - unable to halt his own momentum without stopping and being trampled by the crowd behind him - hit the wall hard, and gave Sango more than enough time to nudge him out of the way and make her way back to the front of the pack. The size difference hadn?t mattered in the slightest - Delphi martial arts taught the practitioner to redirect the opponent?s power against them, which let less bulky fighters like Sango take on trained combatants on more equal terms.

As something of a punishment for playing dirty, she made sure to place the bottle from earlier in his hand before moving on. Cheaters never prospered, or however that saying went.

At last the corridor opened up, revealing the mess hall within. It was very much a room designed to do a job and not to be looked at with fawning eyes, with every surface covered in the same bland shade of beige. Beyond the various tables laid out for students to sit at, a desk next to the entrance held a plate covered in light orange slips of paper. These were the much sought after meal tickets of legend, and although technically they were meant to distributed one at a time it was wordlessly agreed that you could take as many as you felt you could get away with. As soon as the recruits made their way out of the corridor, hands started clawing at the mountain of money, grabbing as many as six or seven tickets at once. Sango settled for two, picking them out very deliberately, before leaving the ongoing frenzy and taking a seat at one of the tables. Almost immediately she began twiddling her thumbs, knowing she was in for a long wait.

Behind her, the room began to erupt into inane chatter between the other cadets. Language was a strange thing in the Del-Sancti - students were trained in the languages they?d need in the event communication with humanity was necessary, but there was also a lower universal language that every Delphi was educated in. It bore a similarity to Greek, but it was such a distant neighbour that only the most educated of scholars would even have recognised the connection, let alone understood what was being said.

There was only room for two students at any given table, but rather than an oversight on the part of the designers this was intentional. For their entire time at the academy, each recruit was paired up with another of the opposite gender with whom they would study, socialise, and inevitably reproduce. The concept of being a parent didn?t have the same weight it would have in the human world - since it was an act of necessity, there was no real need for the participants to love (or even like) each other. Also, mothers and fathers were almost universally too busy doing their own jobs to look after their children, so the academy ended up taking their place.

It was a few minutes before someone sat at the seat opposite from Sango. She smirked a little at that - it was faster than he usually showed up.

?Morning, Kiyoshi.?

It was hard to find a word to describe Sango?s partner. He definitely wasn?t a man, but he was too tall and well-developed to be a boy either. He was well-kept physically, far stronger and taller than his partner. Like her, he was dressed in the basic clothing of the cadet, though the male uniform was much more loose than the female counterpart to avoid awkward situations involving his lower regions. The short grey hair was in place, but only barely, and had clearly been combed in a hurry. As he looked up to Sango, she could make out the fatigue in his jade eyes. He clearly hadn?t been pleased to hear the klaxons this morning.

?Yeah, morning. You bailed me out, right??

Sango sighed to herself, sliding one of her meal tickets across the table. Kiyoshi caught it with a well-trained hand, just as he had done for months up until now. They?d long since developed a routine - Sango would get up early and secure their food supply, while Kiyoshi would need a few minutes just to get out of bed, and would arrive long after the meal tickets had all been claimed. No-one would ever say he was lazy, but it was a fact that the Del-Sancti?s ?get up in the next 20 seconds or no food for you? system didn?t suit everyone. In return, he would hang around the mess hall when dinner came around, and grab a couple of tickets so that Sango didn?t need to rush back from wherever she?d run off to.

For those who had been lucky enough to secure a ticket, breakfast today consisted of what the academy referred to as the Nutrigiri - an onigiri rice-ball filled with a substance no-one was sure how to identify. The filling had no taste or texture, but it definitely made you feel full enough for most of the day, and the outer coverings of rice and seaweed helped to fight off the blandness slightly. Those who hadn?t managed to get a ticket weren?t as lucky - they got the same nutritious filling, but they received it in a bowl as a single gelatinous mass without so much as a flavouring to fight the taste. Sango looked over at a nearby table, seeing one of the less fortunate cadets struggle to working his way through the meal, looking set to be ill with every gulp he took.

A pair of Nutrigiris were laid out in front of the pair as they handed over their tickets. Kiyoshi wasted no time starting on his, chomping down and swallowing almost half of it in a single bite. It was probably the best way to eat this food - the longer you sat and chewed on it, the longer you had to contemplate what exactly it was you were eating, and that never ended well. Sango didn?t share her partner?s energy, though, and took smaller bites as she worked her way through the meal. Everyone was given a glass of water to wash down their meal with - a convenience for those who?d managed to get tickets, and a mercy for those who had to fight through the ball of goop.

?So, tests are coming up. Scared??

From the playful tone in his voice, it was clear Kiyoshi had a good deal of confidence in itself. Sango was tempted to mention that he might have a harder time passing if he ended up late for the exam, but that seemed like a bad way to start the morning.

?What, scared? Me? You?re kidding, right??

Maybe she was prone to going wandering when no-one was looking, but that didn?t mean Sango was a slacker. She did her studying, and practiced what she could. Her trips to the surface were a chance to use her training more practically, so if anything they should have been complimenting her for initiative.

Kiyoshi chuckled at that. The act seemed to wake him up slightly, and his slouch over the table dissipated.

?Well, you?ve got nothing to worry about, do you? You?ve got the Big J in the palm of your hand.?

Sango?s entire body went tense.

?P-Phwee?!?

This was a well-known nervous tic of hers. When Sango?s nerves got the better of her, she would start giving off panicked ?phwee? noises, whistling as if she were still a dolphin. She dropped her breakfast back on the plate, standing up with a look of shock on her face.

?I-It?s nothing like that, I swear! I just think he?s a really good teacher, okay?!?

Kiyoshi was unfazed by Sango?s sudden outburst. He went from slouching in his seat to sitting back comfortably, smirking dryly to himself.

?Yeah, yeah. Sometimes I wonder if you want to have his kids and not mine.?

That was enough to overload Sango?s brain entirely. She attempted to offer a response for a few seconds, but only puzzled phwees drifted out of her mouth. She eventually resigned herself to her seat, her face a bright shade of red.

Kiyoshi allowed himself another chuckle, but let the point drop. He?d had his fun, and his poking was only meant to be playful. Maybe it was poorly aimed, but he had no honest intention to hurt her feelings. She was just fun to toy with, and THAT subject was always enough to get her flustered.

Sango ate the rest of her breakfast in silence, occasionally looking up at Kiyoshi in faux hurt. As payback she gave him a swift kick to the shin, and even though it did no real damage he played along with an exaggerated flinch. They had a strange relationship - it definitely worked in terms of being friends, but if they had to live together like a married human couple they?d drive each other absolutely insane.

And given what they were expected to do in a few years, it was closer to the latter than the former.

Breakfast came to an end with the ringing of a bell in the distance, signaling the start of lessons. There was no desperate rush to get to class on time, and the students travelled down the hallways in an orderly fashion. Sango and Kiyoshi walked down the hallway side by side, close enough that the height difference between the two was blatantly obvious. Sango?s head only made it as far as her partner?s shoulder, and he reached out with one hand to push her along slightly.

?Come on, Sango. Isn?t your real boyfriend waiting for you??

?P-Phwee...?

Sango resisted the urge to kick Kiyoshi again, this time aiming somewhere a little more sensitive. Only a few more days. A few more days, and she?d be an Initiate and wouldn?t have to bother with all this partner nonsense anymore. At least, not until it was time to have kids and meet up with Kiyoshi again and invite him home and-

Actually, she was going to cut that train of thought off right there. There were things she wanted to think about, and THAT definitely wasn?t one of them. She broke away from Kiyoshi, almost running to get to class, and more importantly to get away from him.

She wondered if she could apply for a partner swap this late in her training.

-----

In other news, the story I have has broken 20k and is nowhere near finished. (NNWM counter hasn't updated because site is pretty much impossible to access right now :<)

[Drake]

More OCs do not steal

Nutrigiri is people

Protip: This is pretty much original universe so it's NOTHING BUT OCs, only posting here because Sango's made plenty of showings elsewhere on the board

And STOP SAYING SPOILERS BEFORE THEY HAPPEN

Spoiler:

except not really

[Esifex]

Kiyoshi knows how to get into Sango's mind.

Kiyoshi will also be a ... dolphin rider *waggles eyebrows*

I SENSE RECURRING THEMES, ROUKAN

:V

[Iced Fairy]

Ah!  So this is what you were talking about on IRC.  I understands now.

Also "Please sir, may I have some more?"

[FinnKaenbyou]

Have some more ramblings. Later half descends into :< a little, so be warned.

-----

Education in the Del-Sancti focused mainly on the various pollutants that were making their way into the oceans, and how best to contain them before they did too much damage to the environment. The Initiate only had two tools at their disposal, which they carried on their person at all times - puresalt, a magically prepared solution that could dissolve minor impurities on touch, and aqua-vitae, which was far more potent than its land-based namesake and was used to remove contaminants too small for the naked eye. The academy had found some incredibly devious ways to make use of this limited arsenal; Sango would never have thought of using the water to deal with poison stings in the event of an accident.

As that tidbit suggested, the other large component of Delphi education involved learning to defend yourself against the creatures of the sea. Magic or otherwise, they still looked rather tasty to a certain crowd of fish. It was one of these self-defense classes (or as the academy pleaded students to call it, ?Marine Predator Procedures?) that Sango was starting the day with, and in fact it was her only class for the day. For the most part, she was expected to be using this time to study for the impending exam, but she knew that she wouldn?t be the only one using their time for other more interesting pastimes. Typically, ones that involved stepping out of this overgrown bubble and experiencing the sea for herself.

She had no intention of missing the class, though. MPP had a special place in her heart, and indeed in the hearts of many of her classmates. It wasn?t the material that won their favour, but rather the way it was delivered. The lecturer in this class wasn?t from around these waters, having come from far to the south to teach here. No-one knew exactly why, but they were typically too busy coping with the grown man?s enthusiasm to ask questions. He?d arrived here years ago with nothing but a name, a uniform, and a lot of ways to make big fish hurt.

?And that?s when you give the bloody thing a good whallop in the nose! Nothin? beats the look on a shark?s face when it feels all that cartilage just crackin? up.?

Everyone at the branch simply knew him as Jack, and the name was strange enough in these parts that there was no need for clarification. He was the sort of man that was impossible to meet without leaving some imprint on your mind - well on in his years, far past the time when he?d be fit for duty, but still as spry and active as a newborn. He looked like he?d be most at ease teaching in a chair with a book in front of him, but instead he was prowling round the class, acting out punches and kicks as he spoke. His words carried a foreign twang to them, even in the native Delphi language, and they seemed to echo better around the room as a result.

Lecturers at the academy were exempt from the normal dress code, and it was an exemption Jack took full advantage of. He?d comment whenever he could that he didn?t like the prissy dress of the Del-Sancti, typically with a comment along the lines of  ?Say what you like about graceful and artistic - with all that stuff wavin? around it?s like I?m wearin? a bloody sign sayin? ?Eat me, please?!? He opted for something much more closely cut - a fine-looking white suit, as well-kept as the first day it had been worn, and a matching white tie. It matched the fin emerging from behind his attire, turning white with age as most Delphi fins did. A jet-black shirt beneath the suit served as a powerful contrast, making it even harder to miss him in a crowd. He wore a long-rimmed hat the he referred to as a Stockman, but unlike the rest of his ensemble it appeared to have never recovered from its first soaking. It drooped slightly, making it hard for students to catch a glimpse of his hazel eyes.

?Eh, those were the good old days, weren?t they? I was young, ?n? reckless, ?n? I thought I could take on creatures twice my size and three times my weight? And since I?m still here I guess I was right, wasn?t I??

From anyone else a statement like that would have sounded pretentious, boastful, but Jack?s voice carried a playful tone that made him almost impossible to hate. The class broke out into light chuckles at that one, while he stroked his chin thoughtfully. He was one of the few men in the branch with facial hair, and he ran fingers through his sheer-white stubble in satisfaction.

?But then, that was young by my day. I was round here gettin? bossed about by Journeymen and Sages for ten years longer than you kids have. Real shame - I was lookin? forward to payin? back the favour on my bunch.?

He pouted childishly, sitting up straight on his desk. There were several theories going around that he was actually in disguise and only half the age he claimed to be, and given the openness of his emotions there was a good number of people inclined to believe the claims. Either way, the man possessed a charm that had won him respect and admiration from several of his pupils.

Sango was one of them.

She wouldn?t say it was a crush - that was the one thing it definitely wasn?t. It was more that Jack filled in the role her father couldn?t with the work hours the Del-Sancti expected of him - she saw more of him than she did her actual parents, and in terms of actual personality Jack was far more memorable than her father had been. She remembered him as a devoted but rather bland man, while Jack was the all-singing all-dancing war veteran with a new story to tell every time Sango came to class. There was really no contest in the matter.

To an extent, the feeling had been mutual. Sango had done the time, put in the effort, and was rewarded with the highest marks in the class consistently. She was always the student Jack would come to for difficult questions, and more often than not she gave him exactly what he wanted. She was a model pupil, but more importantly for Jack she could find the right time to drop a quip and send the entire room into a fit of laughter. He would have appreciated the bottle joke she had been planning, but not reporting it would have landed him in deep trouble as well, so she saw no reason to put both of them at risk.

Jack looked out at the classroom. These were the most senior cadets in the branch, each and every one of them ready for their final evaluations. There was no obvious sign of fear in any of their eyes - they were confident not only in their own ability, but in their own unique skills that would inevitably help make a difference in the world around them. How much of that belief was well-placed was a question Jack saw no reason to answer. He tipped his hat towards the class as a sign of respect.

?Well, you?re gonna be outta my hands in a few days. That is, unless you fail, in which case you get to enjoy another year with your old pal Jack. So either way, you?re all gonna win, aren?t you??

Another giggle started its way throughout the classroom. Of course, none of them were planning to fail the test they?d spent most of their lives preparing for, but it was funny enough as it was. In fact, it was so funny that no-one was paying enough attention to see the tall, sleek silhouette behind the door before it slid open.

?Jack-kun. I?d hope you aren?t giving our latest batch of students any questionable ideas.?

Instantly, the laughter stopped.

The air in the room stayed as lukewarm as ever, but every single student in the class felt an individual chill working their way up their spine as the words reached them. Unconsciously each of them stood up straight as if possessed, Sango included. There was more than enough in that sentence to indicate what was coming through the door - the sharp, business-like tone, the insistence on Japanese honorifics in a language where they didn?t belong, and the sudden feeling that a pair of eyes were watching them persistently.

This was the normal response of a Delphi cadet when Oi, self proclaimed Sensei of the branch, ended the room.

In the same manner as Jack, Oi wasn?t expected to adhere to the normal dress code of the Del-Sancti. Rather than a smart-looking dress, though, she had settled on a dark grey kimono which she took particular care to keep from harm at all times. Her long black hair was held up behind her head by a particularly tight bun, in one of the typical hairstyles of the geisha. As if to complete the obvious gesture, there was a sheathed blade attached to her waist, with the definitive curve of a katana.

To say Oi appreciated the culture of Japan would be akin to saying that a fish appreciates water.

?Morning, miss. Here to check I?m not feedin? any of these kids to sharks to prove a point??

Jack was the only person in the room to maintain his cool, staring down Oi with an unfazed grin. The Dean paid him no mind, most likely for the sake of her sanity. It was well known that Jack?s experience was the only reason he?d been employed here - if there had been any reasonable alternative for Oi to take, she?d have gladly accepted it and given the man a prompt shove back out the main gate. As it was, though, she was reluctantly dependent on him to make sure that her newest employees weren?t swallowed up by a whale accidentally on their first day of duty.

?I simply wished to offer a few words to my students while they were all together. I assume you are fine with this??

Even with that, though, she was looking for any excuse to have him removed, and pressed him for every potential sign of insolence of disrespect. From back in her seat, Sango gave the Dean a glare as she pressed her favourite teacher for no reason beyond a personal grudge.

Jack, though, shrugged off the point as if it were nothing.

?Sure. They?re all yours. Looks like they?re payin? more attention to you than they do to me, too.?

Oi seemed irritated by Jack?s lack of response, giving him no recognition beyond a slight nod. He stepped off the desk, walking to the side as Oi looked out at the swarm of cadets. Each of them was perfectly still, afraid that the tiniest movement would be enough to get them cut in half by the Dean. Her emerald eyes looked out toward them with a killer intent as she began to speak.

?Senior disciples of the Delphini Sanctimonia. I have no need to tell you that each and every one of you is on the verge of being accepted into our order, and being trusted with the vital task of protecting our seas from those who would dare to destroy them.?

Say what you wanted about the fear she put in people?s hearts - when Oi gave speeches, she knew how to reach people. Even as they felt themselves stunned into place, the students she addressed could feel a sense of pride and accomplishment welling up inside them with every word. Even Sango, who?d taken more offense than anyone to her harassment of Jack - was willing to accept that she could inspire the masses like no-one else in the branch.

?This is not an easy task we ask of you. That is why before we accept you, you must pass the required examinations to prove you are worthy. Success will earn you the right to wear the robes of the Initiate. Failure will force you to spend another year training before you can once again be considered.?

She put her hands down on the desk with a slam, looking out with a passionate glare. She meant every word she said, and that same drive seeped through her words into her audience.

?A whole year. Twelve months. Three-hundred and sixty-five days. That is how long you will have to spend regretting your mistakes if you fail. Do any of you want that to happen? Are any of you willing to spend another year being taught the same lessons you learned the year before? Taking classes with students a year younger than you? Having to pass by your old classmates, seeing them adorned in our customary robes while you alone are confined to that barely-wearable piece of fabric??

The fear was striking again. Every student present was imagining the scene Oi had laid out, and everyone thought it a pitiful way to be. At the same time, she?d presented them with the wonders of success and the horrors of failure, and the end result was an entire classroom who now wanted to pass this exam more than anything in the world.

?Well? Does anyone here want that to happen to them? I want an answer from you!?

She slammed her fist into the desk this time, almost putting a dent into it in the midst of her fervor. Jack looked at the spot where her hand had impacted, frowning. Eventually, one of the larger men at the front worked up the courage to respond.

?N...No, Sensei.?

?What was that? Once more, with feeling!?

This time, the entire class joined in, shouting out in unison.

?NO, SENSEI!?

Oi nodded.

?Excellent. So can I expect to see all of you as my newest Initiates by the end of the week? Every single one of you, passing our last examinations with flying colours??

Again, every student gave their answer at once.

?YES, SENSEI!?

Oi nodded again, offering the pupils a round of applause. The severe glare of her eyes, though, remained as constant as ever.

?Wonderful response, all of you. You will make excellent additions to the Delphini Sanctimonia.?

Oi?s speech was neatly concluded with the sound of a bell overhead. Oi had apparently hijacked the last five minutes of Jack?s class, but still no-one saw fit to move until the Dean gave the order.

?Very well. You are dismissed. I wish each and every one of you the best of luck in your upcoming examinations.?

The class dispersed in silence, still in awe from the speech they?d received, but not willing to make so much as a whisper in Oi?s presence. They shuffled out into the corridor, leaving Jack alone with the Dean as the last of the students closed the door.

?You?re really good at that, y?know.?

Oi sighed in relief, her shoulders drooping. She made a mental note to ignore Jack?s comment, because sadly there was no way she could tune him out unconsciously.

?It?s a sad fact, but that sort of motivation is all we need. Each and every one of them is convinced they alone have something special that will tip the balance. We?ve taught them that.?

Jack raised his hat up, looking Oi straight in the eye. His playful smile stayed as it had always been.

?And do they? In your professional opinion, anyway.?

Oi?s head drooped.

?I do not think you need me to tell you the answer to that question. You have seen the destruction mankind is capable of first-hand, and we are lucky just to maintain what little ability we have left. We are sending those...children...to fight a war they cannot hope to win. Perhaps we can prevent the end slightly, but eventually we are sure to succumb.?

Maybe she was looking to unnerve Jack with those words, but if she did the teacher made no obvious sign of it. He simply nodded in recognition, giving her a thumbs up.

?And you figure it?s better they have hope now rather than lettin? them get all gloomy about it. I have to say, you?re not the monster everyone seems to think you are.?

?I will give you the benefit of the doubt and take that as a compliment, Jack-kun.?

?Whatever helps you sleep at night."

-----

There was no given order as to what the acolytes were to do with their time, but naturally most of them made their way the the academy?s library, save the couple who took a sneak trip to the surface via the so-called ?house? in the corner of the residential district. Sango figured there would be no harm in a little last-minute revision, and went along with the sizable group of bibliophiles.

The Del-Sancti did not have the best library for studying; unless for some reason you were studying the fine literature of the Delphi race, in which case there was more than enough to work with. Poems and epics about the wonders of the ocean and its inhabitants lined entire bookshelves, to the extent where it was believed no-one had read every book the library possessed on the subject in a single lifetime. Sure enough, this was enough to convince one foolhardy cadet to try reading the whole collection in alphabetical order, and the last Sango had heard he?d just about made it past the first letter.

More relevant to their study, though, were the more distant, battered shelves on more serious matters. They were books on oceanography, the tides of the oceans, noteworthy currents and streams, the various pollutants the human race had introduced to their environment, and some helpful anatomies on the more fearsome creatures of the deep. The books were battered, probably bought decades ago, and in particular the ones on human pollution were long since outdated. Handy notes had been scrawled in by former pupils - for example, a picture of a shark with various points marked by the words ?PUNCH HERE?. Sango chuckled, but committed the information to memory nonetheless.

There was no area she felt she needed to really improve on. As she was, there was little reason for her to have difficulty with this examination, with all the time and effort she?d put in. She would most likely pass with flying colours and graduate with the highest honours possible.

But.

She?d never say a word about it to anyone, but there was a lingering concern at the back of her head. What if she was wrong? What if in fact her knowledge wasn?t as solid as she?d believed it to be, and she was about to walk into an examination which she was blatantly unprepared for? The images from Oi?s speech earlier came into her mind again - another year with Jack in Self-Defense, seeing the disappointment in his face at her shortcoming. Being partnered up with a new kid, a year younger than she was, a boy who?d probably poke fun at her whenever he found the chance. Walking past Kiyoshi in the corridor, seeing him clad in the uniform of the Initiate while she had to settle for a piece of clothing that barely covered her essentials.

Sango was looking down at the book, but she wasn?t truly processing the information. She didn?t want to admit it, but the thought of failure - however slim and unlikely it may have been - was squirming around inside her brain and refusing to let her rest. The worst-case scenario played itself out in her head over and over, each time growing more dramatic and disastrous in the last. Soon she was convinced that if she were to fail this examination, her former classmates would simply deny her existence. Jack would ignore her for the rest of time, and that was assuming Oi didn?t have her banished for blatant incompetence.

It was too much. Far, far, far too much. She wasn?t ready for this, she didn?t know if she?d ever be ready for this-

?Sango, you okay??

A hand landed on her shoulder, pulling her out of her rumination. Kiyoshi looked down at her with something almost resembling concern in his face. It seemed almost alien there, like it didn?t belong for the cadet to have a serious expression while dealing with Sango.

Quickly, the dolphin attempted to save face.

?O-Oh, no worries. Just spaced out. Lot of late nights studying, after all. It gets to you.?

Kiyoshi seemed unconvinced, looking a little deeper into Sango?s eyes. He received a pleading look in response, silently asking ?Please stop asking me about this subject, I don?t want to discuss it?. He bit his lip, clearly unsure how to play the situation, but finally deciding to stick to his normal methods and cracking a joke.

?Eh, really? I figured those dreams you must have about the Big J would have rested you up pretty damn well.?

The book fell to the floor with a quiet pat. The spine splintered, and a few pages slid loose of their holdings. Sango?s face turned a colour of red normally reserved for strawberries and tomatoes. But this time, she wasn?t giving off the playful anger from breakfast.

She was deathly serious.

?P-P-Phwee...! I told you to stop bringing that up, alright?! You get me so pissed sometimes, I just want to...!?

Sango stood up quickly, turning on the spot to towards Kiyoshi. For a moment, she looked up at him with sheer anger in her eyes - she?d been in a volatile enough mood already, and his comment had been enough to send what small balance she?d had spiraling downward. He couldn?t hide the look in his eyes - when Sango descended into this state, he was genuinely frightened of her.

Then the moment ended, and Sango realised exactly what she?d been thinking. Her tense, battle-ready posture collapsed, and she looked down at herself like she?d forgotten the last five minutes.

?Ah, I, uh...?

What had she done? If she had come to her senses a moment later, she might have given Kiyoshi a smack across the face there and then. He?d cracked an innocent joke, and she was about to snap at him for it. What was wrong with her?

?I...I need to go. Now.?

She sidestepped out past Kiyoshi, dashing for the exit with all the speed she could produce. The book she?d been reading still lay on the floor, forgotten in the heat of the moment. Kiyoshi attempted to follow her for a while, but what he had on her in sheer muscle he lost in agility. She was long gone by the time he made it out of the library.

He sighed. This wasn?t the first time Sango?s emotions had got the better of her from nowhere - once she?d gone all the way and left him with a nasty bruise on the cheek for his efforts. Every time she would inevitably come back and apologise, but the next outburst was always right around the corner. Initially he?d been mad about it, furious that she was so insincere with her words and never learning from her mistakes, but as he spent year after year with her that anger slowly turned to pity.

There was something seriously wrong with that girl?s mind. He just didn?t have a clue what it was, or how he was supposed to help her.

-----

Leaving had been a good idea. The best idea she?d had all day, in fact. With no-one around to yell at, she could let this mood pass without worrying about burning any more bridges. She?d made her way to the escape route the instant she cleared the library, and from there she?d burst to the surface as fast as her fins would carry her.

It was never quite the same spot she found herself in when she surfaced, but she didn?t usually venture beyond the area above the branch. That still gave her a few kilometres of open sea to work with, where there would almost definitely be no-one to see her. Her usual tactic was to find a rock hanging above the surface and use it as a seat - indeed, it was the same strategy she used on her normal visits, but this time she wasn?t busy appreciating the surroundings. She puffed and panted, having pushed herself to the limit on the trip.

What was there to say? She was scared. She couldn?t admit it to anyone, but she was frightened of screwing up. If she were to ever let on that she wasn?t the model student everyone thought she was, it?d be just as bad as if she?d failed the exam with flying colours. What interest would the Del-Sancti have in a cadet who was too paranoid about her own success to actually do her job? She didn?t have time to be afraid, not when there was work to be done and water to be cleansed.

And yet, here she was, moping on her own when she could have been studying, or training, or anything more productive than sitting here and pondering her navels.

?...I?m an idiot.?

She muttered to herself, unheard by anyone. She was an idiot for thinking she?d pass so easily, she was an idiot for worrying so much, she was an idiot for nearly hitting Kiyoshi...as far as she was concerned, she was an idiot on about a dozen different scales. She was producing nothing worthwhile here, and she knew it, yet she couldn?t stop herself coming back time after time.

Something wet rolled down her cheek. For the sake of her pride, she assumed it was just a water droplet dripping down from her hair.

She wasn?t sure how long she spent sitting on that rock, looking out blankly at the ocean. The sun rose over her, and started to make its departure to the west in the midst of her stay. It was only the fear of missing dinner that convinced her to move on. Kiyoshi was only going to wait so long on her before the meals got cold, after all.

Sango wished she knew how everyone else got by, but again she couldn?t risk telling anyone in case they spread the story and she was discredited for good. There had to be a reason everyone else could cope with the risk, while she alone was dreading the exam even though she had no reason to believe things would go wrong. Maybe she was just not brave enough to be accepted into the Del-Sancti.

?...I?ll find out when the test hits me, I guess.?

Sango muttered to herself as she dropped down into the water, quickly diving back beneath the surface and starting the long journey home. For now, it would be back to studying and practicing, and secretly hoping that the fears she?d been carrying around with her were misplaced.

Because if they weren?t, she had no idea how she was going to cope.

-----

The mood lifted as she began the trip home, and Sango returned back to the Del-Sancti as if nothing had ever happened. The klaxons rang out again to show that it was time to eat, and the cadets set off on another dash to the mess hall to secure their share. Sango didn?t share their feelings of urgency - Kiyoshi would have bailed her out to make up for this morning.

Dinner was even less flamboyant than breakfast was - the lucky meal ticket holders were entitled to have rice and flavourings along with their generic but nutritional slabs of grey sludge. Otherwise, it was the usual challenge of ?eat as much of the goop as possible without being ill?, a test that had claimed many a Delphi?s stomach over the years.

Kiyoshi seemed to have lost his appetite tonight. He played with his food rather than eating it, twirling his fork around in the muck to make whatever pattern seemed the most interesting to him. Occasionally he would look up at Sango, but only for long enough to catch a glimpse of her eyes. Then he would jerk his head away, apparently spellbound by his meal.

Sango sighed, mustering up the nerve to break the silence.

?...Sorry for snapping at you earlier.?

?S?ok.?

They?d been through this routine several times before. She would lose it, do something she regretted, offer an apology, and Kiyoshi would let bygones be bygones. For the most part they were almost adversaries, but when it came to serious matters they suddenly learned how to deal with each other. Eventually they?d both just forget this ever happened and get back to picking on each other again.

With every repetition of the same routine, though, Kiyoshi grew more and more frustrated. Not because Sango was being aggressive, but because he couldn?t find any way to help her. He wouldn?t be caught saying it - especially not in front of the girl herself - but he was genuinely concerned about her wellbeing. Unconsciously, he moved a hand forward and placed it on top of hers.

Sango seemed mostly unaware of the message Kiyoshi was trying to get across. She?d managed to lift herself out of her state, but her mind was still focused on the upcoming examinations. She recited passages from dictionaries in her head, checking that she had every piece of information she could possibly need for the test. She didn?t have enough focus left after that to do any more than absent-mindedly eat her meal, and so Kiyoshi?s attempt to reach out to her had no effect.

?Hey, Sango...?

Calling out to her was enough to get her attention. She looked over at him, wiping a few stray grains of rice off her face.

?Yeah? What?s up??

It was that moment, with Sango looking at him like nothing was wrong in the slightest, that Kiyoshi realised he had no idea what to say. The cogs in his brain clogged up, standing still, and he found himself unable to produce a coherent sentence. His mouth opened and closed a few times, trying to put words together and failing miserably.

He wanted to help her. He wanted to talk this over, try and get her out of the ruts she always found herself in. But at the same time she looked happy as she nibbled on her food, and if he brought this subject up there was no doubt that tiny smile on her face would give way to another violent temper. What could he even say that would help her, anyway? This had been a bad idea from the start.

?...Nothing. Sorry.?

Sango looked puzzled by his eventual response, but shrugged and turned her attention back to her meal. Kiyoshi bit his lip, silently reprimanding himself for letting her down again. It seemed all he could do in these circumstances was stutter like an idiot and waste his time, but that wasn?t going to stop him from trying. He cared, and he was looking for any way he could find to get that concern across. He had to settle for squeezing her hand, comforting her even if she didn?t know she needed it.

I?m here for you, Sango. Don?t worry.

He couldn?t tell if Sango understood the message he was trying to get across. But he would probably sleep easier tonight if he assumed she did.

[Sect]

Dolphin trainees kidnapped by aliens and Sango teams up with dolphin mages and a time travellling dolphin to save them. Calling it now.

Anyways, I'm still indecisive on what I think of the story so far: Sango's anger issues make her a more interesting character than she was before this latest snip, and the premise is interesting, but other than that... ::shrug::

Then again, this is all prologue stuff, so I can afford to wait.

[Iced Fairy]

You did a pretty good job of introducing the two side characters here.  Didn't quite catch all the interplay, but that's to be expected.

Also your description of the food makes it almost count as cruel and unusual punishment.  You'd think someone could catch a fish .

When it comes to protecting the oceans, protecting the creatures that live in it sort of falls under the same category. They don't have the power to stop the fishing industry outright, obviously (and if they did it would probably destroy the ecosystem anyway), but they typically intervene when mankind is about to bring a species to extinction.

Yes, I may be thinking too much about this. :|

[Esifex]

Yes, I may be thinking too much about this. :|

The devil's in the details, though - you're obviously planning this story out in clear, defined depth.

[FinnKaenbyou]

THEY TOLD ME TO SLEEP
BUT I'M LIKE SCREW THEM KEINE TOLD ME TO UPDATE DEL SANCTI
SO I AM

-----

The day of the examination snuck up on Sango faster than she had anticipated. Her trips to the surface had been postponed for the last few days while she worked, ensuring that every possibility was foreseen and every question the test could offer her had been planned for. She would stay up well past curfew studying, still making the daily race to breakfast even when it was a challenge to keep her eyes open.

Now, with the test looming in the horizon, she saw fit to grant herself a proper night?s sleep. The last thing she wanted to do was walk into the exam, finish the first three questions, then fall asleep on top of her desk. She started snoring almost as soon as her head hit the pillow, having pushed her body to the limit in the last few days.

The next time she opened her eyes, she was no longer in her tiny cubicle of a house. The grand hall of the academy surrounded her - the best kept room in the academy, used only for ceremonies of graduation and promotion. The walls were adorned with flags of every colour, and on the back wall mosaics of the previous Deans had been constructed with the utmost care. They were traditional, classically dressed men, for the most part, but at the rightmost mosaic the severe glare of Oi still brought a chill to her spine even when captured in art. Another mosaic seemed to be prepared to the right of Oi?s, but a red curtain had been hung up to block it from view.

The room was easily large enough to fit the entire student body of the branch, and sure enough the room was packed with both cadets and Initiates. Looking out into the crowd, Sango could even see the occasional Journeyman or Sage in the ranks of the audience. It took her a little longer to realise that their attention was focused entirely on her.

?Ladies and gentlemen. We have gathered here today to honour the newest member of our senior staff. Though she is by far the youngest to be promoted to this post, all of us agree that she has proven herself more than worthy of her new title.?

Oi?s loud, booming voice from behind startled Sango as it took her by surprise. Turning around, she could see various teachers standing to attention behind the Dean, and her eyes immediately landed on Jack. He shot her a proud smile as she turned to him, and her heart skipped a beat.

?We expect her to be an invaluable addition to our executive branch, just as she has always been a priceless asset to the student populace. Though perhaps we have been too prideful to admit it, we are all fond of her friendliness, her wittiness, and most of all her determination. We will put out egos to one side, then, and at last offer her the congratulations she deserves.?

Sango spun around on the spot, still bewildered. Who was this ceremony for, exactly? It couldn?t be...could it? Oi put a hand on her shoulder to stop her twirling around in confusion, and now Sango could see that for the first time she could remember the Dean was smiling.

?There is no need to worry, Sango-san. You will do perfectly fine. We all have faith in you.?

There were no words for the emotions working their way into Sango?s heart right now. She stood in place, looking out to the waiting crowd like she was having trouble acknowledging their existence. Oi let go of her, standing to her side and partaking in a deep bow.

?And now, ladies and gentlemen, can I please have a round of applause for our newest Dean!?

The crowd didn?t need a cue. The applause was instant, and almost deafening. Everyone in the room broke into clapping even in the midst of Oi?s sentence, to the point where Sango was probably the only person to catch the whole thing. Not that she was listening - she was busy being overwhelmed by the entire event, feeling tears start to form in her eyes. The curtain on the back wall came down, and Sango could see that her own face had joined those of the former Deans.

She couldn?t speak. She couldn?t think. She couldn?t breathe. This was it. This was the moment she had been striving for all this time, the goal that every instant of studying had been aimed toward. It had been a long and difficult road, but she had emerged victorious at long last. The crowd continued to applaud, long after they could have stopped, and she felt as if everything she?d put herself through up until now had finally been worth it.

Another hand made its way onto her shoulder. She was almost too numb to feel it, but as she turned around she caught the sight of Jack looking down on her with paternal pride.

?Good work, kid. I?m proud of you.?

-----

Sango?s eyes opened. Her heart soared in elation, and came crashing back down again as she realised she was once again staring at the ceiling of her crummy home in the middle of nowhere.

Of course she had been dreaming. Now that she was awake, she knew just how absurd the scenario had been, but that didn?t stop it from feeling incredible. Even knowing it had been a figment of her imagination, she couldn?t help but smile as she pulled herself to her feet, getting herself washed up before making her way to the academy for the examination.

That was the moment she wanted to capture for herself. Everyone looking on her with respect, appreciating and caring about the work she did. The teachers she?d worked under accepting her as an equal and passing on the torch knowing that it was in good hands. The ice queen of a Dean defrosted, giving her the same loving smile that everyone else had.

Most of all, that feeling of acceptance from Jack, like she?d finally satisfied the father she never had.

As she stepped out of the cubicle with a clean face and a spring in her step, Sango felt strangely at ease. Maybe that dream hadn?t been real, but that didn?t mean she couldn?t go out there and make it happen. She would go out there and prove herself to everyone here, and she would knock that silly exam into next week. She?d stand head and shoulders above the rest of the class and revel in the praise she?d worked so hard to earn.

After all, that was exactly what people expected of her, had always expected of her. She?d always been the best, so she always had to stay the best. She could hardly let the Del-Sancti down, or she would have a long way to fall.

-----

There was no fuss or complication with the preparations for the test. Each student was given a number long beforehand, relating to the seat at which they had to sit. They would be handed a paper, dotted with various questions that would test their knowledge and training. Practical examinations were too complicated and risky to go through - and in the event of things such as fighting predators, they were too likely to end in casualties in the event of failure.

The pass mark was mercilessly high - students would be required to score 80% or higher in order to pass the course. Anything less than that, and it was time to face another year of training and education while your classmates finally got to experience the ocean for real. As she entered the actual hall, Sango could make out a hulking beast of a man, looking down at his paper almost on the verge of tears. This was his fourth time sitting the exam, which made him three years older than his fellow students. Sango had wanted to comfort him, but she honestly couldn?t find anything to say, eventually sighing as she made her way to her own seat.

Words failed to describe the atmosphere in the exam hall. It soon became clear to Sango that she wasn?t the only student worrying about her chances here - to her right, she could see a slim-looking cadet holding his head in his hands, taking deep breaths to try and calm his nerves. On her left, a panicked girl was trying to read through a heaving tome at light-speed, giving herself only a few seconds on each page before moving on in a desperate attempt to memorise the entire thing. In front of her a young man twirled his pencil incessantly, and he would probably have started to bite at it if the Sensei?s watchful eye wasn?t working its way down the files.

The welcoming smile Sango had seen in her dream this morning was long gone now. Oi walked down the rows of students, turning to each of them with a bow and muttering a wish of good luck in the exam. It was clear from her expression, though, that luck had nothing to do with it - this test was not designed to be passable through sheer coincidence. She wanted only the best of these students to serve in the Del-Sancti, and those who didn?t match up were to be put back where they?d been twelve months ago.

At last, it was Sango?s turn to receive the ?blessing? of the Dean. She squirmed slightly in her seat as the woman offered her a bow, choosing to offer her words in Japanese out of personal preference. Maybe that was a trick in and of itself - if someone had been falling behind on their languages, this was Oi?s way of rubbing it in.

?Do your best, Sango-san. Good luck.?

Oi was motivational at times, but she had clearly never mastered the art of being comforting. Sango was relieved just to see her move on to some other hapless student and stop focusing on her in particular. Even from behind, Oi?s fin - dark grey, almost to the point of sheer black - pointed emphatically towards Sango, and it wasn?t until she?d moved on entirely that the cadet felt herself relax.

She?s a good teacher, yeah. Doesn?t stop her from being scary as hell.

The papers were handed out by a group of Initiates who?d volunteered to help with the running of the test. Each student received a few face-down sheets of paper, with specific orders not to so much as touch them until they were given the order. Oi, as always, was carrying her favourite weapon on her person, so no-one was foolish enough to disobey the order lest they were turned into Delphi fillet.

Sango looked around, wishing that she could at least have seen some form of support from Jack. He was nowhere to be seen, though, probably off teaching a class at this moment in time. Kiyoshi was nowhere near her either, though that was arguably a mixed blessing. He occasionally turned back towards her from the other end of the room, but partners had deliberately been split up to prevent cheating.

Oi took her place in front of the hall. Her ominous glare once again made its way along the students. There were only a dozen students sitting the exam, but the academy expected far more passes than failures even with tests of this difficulty.

And by ?expected?, they basically meant ?needed?.

?You will have two hours to complete this examination. When you are finished, leave the room silently and wait for the results to be declared this evening.?

Oi?s words may as well have been an absolute moral law to the students. No-one dared to utter a word, simply looking down and preparing themselves for the task that they were about to take on.

?Alright. You may begin.?

A dozen hands turned over the first question paper in unison. The room was silent except for the ticking of the clock in the corner of the hall and the furious scribbling of answers.

That single motion, the turning over of the first sheet, was without a doubt the hardest part of the examination for Sango. It was more than enough time for her mind to run through all sorts of disaster scenarios, wondering about all the questions they could ask that she wouldn?t know the answer to, whether there would be trick questions or extended essays she hadn?t prepared for, whether she?d managed to spell her name wrong and get the whole thing invalidated.

Those fears were hanging over her as she looked at the first question on the paper. A simple question about how to most efficiently swim against a current moving at a given angle when the tides were going out. She sat staring at it for almost a minute, not so much as picking up her pencil. She examined the question intently, looking for a trick or a missing piece of information that made it infinitely harder. She even checked if something had been written in invisible ink at the end just in case by rubbing her finger along the paper.

She found nothing.

Sango was stunned. It was hardly general knowledge, true, but compared to the questions she had been expecting this was...simple. She knew it, and she could answer the question with confidence. She looked confused as she grabbed her pencil on instinct, hastily jotting down the necessary working.

I know this.

The second question was on a common race of lesser pollutants used by mankind, and asked which of them were in the Initiate?s jurisdiction to take care of. Again, she looked for a hidden trap in the question, but it was totally honest. She answered comprehensively - everything in the list, save crude oil and transport disasters, were in the Initiate?s area of expertise.

I know this, too.

Next came a hypothetical scenario - if Sango were to encounter a dangerous breed of jellyfish during her purification that would pose a hindrance to her work if not removed, what was her main course of action? This, perhaps, was the closest there had been to a trap so far - the logical action would be to get rid of the creature by force if necessary, because keeping the sea maintained was the highest of Delphi virtues, but in doing so she would be killing an inhabitant of the sea and thus contradicting herself. Besides, as she?d learned from Jack himself, aqua vitae worked surprisingly well in taking care of jellyfish stings among other things.

I know all of these...!

The disastrous unsolvable question Sango had been prepared for had yet to appear, and she found herself blazing through the questions double-time. Halfway through, in what was undeniably a cruel move, the questions suddenly switched from being asked in Delphinian to being asked in Japanese. She heard various groans from the other students as they approached that segment, but linguistics were a subject Sango had made sure to give the appropriate time. Besides testing her basic literacy in the language - demanding her to quote and translate kanji that even most fluent Japanese speakers wouldn?t be aware of - the exam questioned her on the most popular pieces of classic Delphi literature, asking her for short and thorough explanations of the plot and moral. Here she scratched her head in confusion - what use would there ever be in knowing about books that humans had never read, exactly?

The Sensei probably insisted on throwing these in. Culture and all that.

She was lucky in that she didn?t need to give full synopses of the plot - she?d read the books in question, but not to the point where she?d committed the entire script to heart. She preferred seeing the sea for herself over reading centuries-old philosophers ramble on about how beautiful the colour blue was, and how it represented the purity of the soul, and all the other nonsense that these people came up with. Wasn?t it enough to just think the sea was beautiful enough to be worth protecting without having to attach a thousand metaphorical meanings to it?

She had been prepared for everything, anything the test had offered her so far. Nothing posed a hindrance, caused her to draw a blank. Occasionally, she?d had to dig deep to bring up the fact she needed, but when she did it was with certainty. There was only one thing the exam managed to throw at her that caught her off guard, and it consisted of four words written in classical Delphinian.

END OF QUESTION PAPER

?Phwee...??

She let out a little cry of surprise. She must have dropped a piece of paper, or not been handed it, or something that would make this exam harder than it had been. Her hands started to rummage around beneath her desk, causing enough noise to turn some heads at her sides, but no-one spoke up as Sango found nothing on the floor. She checked the numbering on the questions, and whether she?d forgotten to answer one, but to her shock every question was present and accounted for and had a double-checked answer to match.

It was over.

Sango?s chair made a loud, deliberate creak as she stood up. She was still staring at the papers she?d left completed on her desk, without a flaw she could make out. One or two students had left before her, but they hadn?t looked particularly confident in their results as they passed by. She was numb for the entire journey from her seat back to the entrance, leaving the tense atmosphere of the hall behind her.

She nearly collapsed after she cleared the doorway.

?I...I did it...??

She still seemed uncertain, wondering if there was a trap in the whole system that she?d failed to catch. She was trying to be the best, but at the same time she was convinced things weren?t supposed to be this easy. The paradox was lost on her as she continued to ponder what she?d misunderstood about the paper all the way back to her dorm.

It couldn?t have been that easy...right?

-----

It took the volunteering Initiates a few hours to mark the exams. After the marathon for dinner, the tested students sat near each other in silence, no-one having the nerve to ask about the questions. The last thing they wanted was for a fellow classmate to tell them they?d been wrong, after all, so they slowly work through their respective portions of rice and whatever-the-grey-stuff-was.

?Evenin?, all.?

A voice from the entrance caught the glances of everyone in the room. Leaning on the edge of the doorway, Jack was carefully adjusting his hat and smiling as he looked towards the quietest table in particular.

?Thought you?d like to know that your papers have been marked, and your results are waiting for you in the main hall. Think you?ll be pretty ha-?

No-one heard the second half of Jack?s sentence over the sound of a dozen students standing up and dashing past him, straight for the hall. The students didn?t show any sign of anticipation as they made their way over. They were afraid, each and every one of them, because with a test that thorough and decisive there was no room for relief.

The results had been placed on a wall at the side of the hall, in barely legible font. It listed the names of the students who had passed the exam, and those who had failed - grades were irrelevant, because in this exam it was only a matter of success of failure.

Twelve bodies tried to push past each other to read the results first. Twelve pairs of eyes managed to catch the vital glimpse of the paper to determine their own results.

And, all at once, twelve voices rang out in elation.

For the first time in years, the Far-East Branch of the Del-Sancti had produced a 100% annual graduation rate.

-----

NOW GOODNIGHT I AM FFFFUUUUUUCVKJIGNSD TIRED

[Sect]

Go to sleep.

Anyways, so only a written exam? No practical? Hm.

When I was in AIT, if I fell asleep in the middle of a test, then I passed it. The one time I didn't I failed and had to retake it.

[Kasu]

Well then, it looks like things went well for everyone there.

Nice to see Sango in a different environment, keep it up!  :3

[Lloyd Dunamis]

Wish I read the story first before the comments T_T...

...A-anyway, Sango, a friend of Ika Musume in saving the sea or something de geso!... oh wait, Ika's mission is to invade the humans :ohdear: (has read more or less half of the first post at this point)

[FinnKaenbyou]

WARNING
A LARGE BATTLESHIP
RIDICULOUS ASSPULL
IS APPROACHING FAST

-----

The graduation ceremony was something always spoken of with dramatic, fluttery language among the cadets. It was treated as a holy ritual, akin to the human idea of christening, or more accurately with the idea of a bar mitzvah. It was the sign that a student had come of age, and finally earned the right to be considered equals among the Delphini Sanctimonia. Even as the pupils undergoing the ritual grew younger and younger, the same nostalgic feel remained as the story of graduation was passed on from parent to child, always viewing it in a whimsical, fantastical way.

The actuality was disappointing, of course, but only slightly. Maybe it wasn?t really taking place in a room whose walls were made of the brightest cold, and maybe there weren?t actually choir singers telling dramatic tales of the Initiates as the ceremony took place. But the feeling of accomplishment still remained, and as they waited outside the grand hall for the ceremony to begin each of them could feel their stomachs churning in anticipation.

Occasionally, the students would break out into spontaneous fits of congratulations, talking about how it was great they?d all managed to come through together and how they?d achieved something incredible. It was difficult to tell whether the words were genuine, or spoken just so the speaker could comprehend the magnitude of their achievement.

Sango?s, at the very least, were probably of the latter variety. Every time she opened her mouth, she could hear a little voice in her head panicking, spewing out the words ?I did it, I did it, I did it? over and over again, and it took all the self control her frenzied mind could muster to avoid making her panic known to her fellow students. The closest she ever got to giving it away was the occasional muttered phwee, which got her a few pats on the head from the male pupils with comments of being ?cute?.

On second thought, maybe running around screaming like a maniac would have been a better idea. She stepped away from the group, twiddling her thumbs and holding back the urge to turn twelve graduates into eleven graduates and a battered frat boy. She sat herself on a nearby chair, waiting for the stroke of midnight that would begin the ceremony.

?Hey.?

Kiyoshi came out of the mass soon afterward, looking relieved to have a chance to get Sango to himself. He sat down beside her, offering a salute.

?Excellent work, Agent Sango. Operation Pass Along Your Answers To The Entire Class was an astounding success.?

Sango did something unusual as Kiyoshi gave her another dose of his poor humour. Against everything she?d normally have done in the situation, Sango?s face broke into a smile, and she let off a girlish giggle at the joke.

?Well, of course. What would you guys do without me??

Seeing that laugh was immediately enough to lift Kiyoshi?s spirits. He put an arm around her shoulder, momentarily forgetting the awkwardness that always seemed to overtake him when Sango became involved.

?So, now that we?re all grown ups, does this mean you?re gonna outgrow those moods of yours??

Too far.

?Ah...?

Sango?s face fell, and immediately Kiyoshi regretted shooting his mouth off. He stuttered out something resembling an apology, trying to keep some semblance of dignity as he spoke.

?N-Not that you weren?t grown up already! I mean, you?re tall, pretty, and your chest is-?

Kiyoshi cut himself short there, clasping a hand over his mouth. His face had long since gone crimson. Sango might have even been offended by his words if she wasn?t busy wrapped up in what he?d said before.

Those moods of hers. The moments when she?d let even the risk of failure paralyse her. Would they disappear, now that she?d seen first-hand that they weren?t genuine? No, that was too much of a jump - after all, she still had to climb the ranks to Journeyman, then to Sage, and finally to Dean. There was so much that could go wrong in that process, more than she could even think to comprehend. And of course, there?d still be the same expectations held against her, and she could hardly stop to pick herself up when she fell-

?...go? Sango? Hello??

Kiyoshi clicked his fingers a few inches from Sango?s eyes, catching her attention. She became aware that she was expected to have given an answer at least a minute ago. Something slipped out, desperate and uninspired.

?O-Oh, sorry. I?ll...I?ll try, I guess.?

Kiyoshi could hear the halfhearted sentiment in Sango?s voice with ease. His heart trembled, and he found himself unable to even offer eye contact as his partner took a sudden interest in her feet.

The awkward silence between the pair continued until the clock hanging above the doorway at last struck midnight. The doorway to the great hall opened with an ominous creak, sending a few specks of dust outwards into the corridor. The graduates stared at one another for a moment, uncertain if this was their cue to enter, until at last the closest of their number took the first steps into the fabled graduation room.

The initial disappointment with the ceremony redoubled as the passing students observed the interior of the hall. The place was barely kept in order, probably seeing little attention beyond the weekly dusting. The mosaics of the Deans were barely visible in the dim light of the chandelier, itself missing at least half a dozen candles. The entire room felt as if it had been taken out of the wrong era - it didn?t belong here, it had stayed behind while the technology of the branch had moved on. There was no feeling of history or nostalgia, just anachronism.

Sango?s nose tingled. It wasn?t from a smell, she knew that, but it was almost like an instinct. There was something peculiar about this room, something special about it. She wanted to say it felt magical, but that was a long shot for this worn-down schoolhall. She wrote it off as nerves, filing it to her side and focusing instead on the only other soul in the room.

At the podium at the end of the hall, Oi stood alone with a solemn look on her face. It was better than the typical death glare, yes, but it was still hardly the sort of look that they?d expected for what was supposed to be a joyous occasion. Maybe this was just as close to happiness as her face was able to convey.

?Do not be shy, children. Come here.?

Her voice was apparently as poor at this whole ?fellowship? thing as her face was. Reluctantly, the cadets stepped further into the hall, a little uncertain as to whether they were actually in the right place. As they approached, they could see that various racks were placed on the table, with a total of two dozen vials on the table. Each Initiate would be entrusted with two of these - one filled with puresalt, the other with aqua vitae. Though the Del-Sancti would obviously resupply anyone who ran through their vials, they didn?t approve of needing to do so repeatedly, and thus newcomers were expected to treat their tools with care and only use them when necessary.

More importantly, there were several piles of clothing at her side, each of them with a name tag placed on top of it. They were different sizes, but all of them shared the same design - a dark blue shirt, with bubble symbols running along the sleeves in a paler shade, and beneath it a simple grey skirt-like piece of clothing. (The men, of course, had groaned at the sight of it, but tradition meant more to the Del-Sancti than gender stereotypes.)

The shirt?s bright red collar, along with the matching belt that completed the ensemble, were the main symbol of rank in the order. Red was the colour of the initiate - the fiery passion of a newcomer, and the burning desire to keep the seas pure. Next came green - the Journeyman. Though calmer and no longer possessing the sheer enthusiasm of the Initiate, experience still gave them the ability to move like the wind, leaving cleaner seas in their wake. Finally, the Sage?s belt was a light shade of blue - they had worked so intently for so long that they had practically become one with the sea itself, and they were peerless in their craft.

Sango, like everyone else, had these ranks rammed into her head in the most poetic fashion possible. It had been horribly overdone, and the cadets were willing to just see them as promotions and demotions, rather than ?symbols of the Delphi?s growth and maturity?. Sango wondered if the overly flamboyant method through which they?d been educated was a covert way of turning them into efficient, businesslike employees who would do their job to the letter and avoid all this unnecessary dramatics.

That, or they just had really crappy taste in literature.

?Congratulations, all of you. Each and every one of you has earned the right to be considered an Initiate of the Delphini Sanctimonia. Now we need only go through this final ritual with all of you, and your days as students will at last come to an end.?

Even in her commendations, Oi didn?t seem to be able to sound kind. It took a moment for Sango to realise that the cadets had unconsciously stood to attention, even without an order. The Sensei was most terrifying when she made no attempt to be.

?I will call you to the podium one at a time. Each of you will perform a small oath, and then make your way out with your new equipment. Is that clear??

This was beginning to feel less like a celebration and more like a punishment. If the stories each of these cadets had heard from their parents was true, then Oi had taken the ceremony in another direction entirely. They looked at one another, puzzled.

?I said, is that clear??

The stern tone that was so often associated with Oi began to flare up again. A chord of fear played in the hearts of the students, and they all responded in sync.

?YES, SENSEI!?

Oi nodded in recognition, before turning to the first bundle of clothing. She leaned down to pick it up, reading the nametag as she did so.

?Cadet Kiyoshi-kun, please make your way up here.?

Kiyoshi went tense. Half an hour ago he was eager to be the first to take the oath, but Oi had done everything in her power to make their new post as unwelcoming as possible. He gave Sango a playful wink as he made his way up.

If I die up there, make sure they give me an awesome epitaph.

Sango couldn?t have made out Kiyoshi?s thoughts even if she?d tried, but his legs were shaking in spite of his brave face. Oi stepped back from the podium so that Kiyoshi could stand in front of his fellow classmates, all of them watching as if Kiyoshi were about to be executed.

?Now, Kiyoshi-kun, repeat after me. ?My body is one with the ocean.??

Kiyoshi seemed unnerved by the choice of words, but no alternative could be worse than disobeying the Sensei.

?My body is one with the ocean...?!?

There was a very visible flinch in Kiyoshi?s body as the last word left his mouth. The eleven watching students gave off little murmurs of concern, and Kiyoshi?s attention was no longer focused on any of them. It was hard for Sango to tell if they were concerned for Kiyoshi in particular, or if they were busy worried about the fact they would be next.

?Very good. Now, ?My mind is one with the ocean.??

?...My mind is one with the ocean...?

Kiyoshi looked more confident with that line. There had been no mention of the Del-Sancti at all, which confused Sango, but something about his mood changed with his words. He seemed almost distracted, looking out towards nothing as he spoke.

??My soul is one with the ocean.??

?My soul is one with the ocean.?

Kiyoshi sounded almost excited now. His voice grew more and more vibrant, and he stopped tripping on his words. This wasn?t an oath to the Del-Sancti, Sango concluded - it was an oath to the ocean itself. It didn?t matter that the official telling him this vow was possibly the most terrifying woman to have ever walked a seabed - the waters were ever-beautiful, ever-accepting, and ever in need of their protection.

??Thus, if the ocean dies, I die. Thus, I shall guard this ocean with all of my life.??

The last few lines had the most dramatic wording of all, and there were nervous twitches throughout the crowd as ugly thoughts started drifting into people?s heads. Kiyoshi, though, had clearly been hooked by this vow, and he would have seen it through to the end even if it was a promise to swim the seas totally naked for the first week of duty.

?Thus, if the ocean dies, I die.?

Kiyoshi looked out blankly into the crowd. They clearly hadn?t seen the same reason to be eager as he had, but then again no-one else had uttered this vow. They would understand when it was their turn, he assumed.

?Thus, I shall guard this ocean with all of my life.?

Oi nodded, lifting the pile of clothing off the floor entirely as Kiyoshi finished his vow. She held it in one hand, placing a hand on his shoulder. Kiyoshi visibly flinched, but resisted the urge to run screaming out the hall.

?Congratulations, Kiyoshi-kun. By the power invested in me as the Dean of this branch of the Delphini Sanctimonia, I hereby promote you to the rank of Initiate. Do us proud.?

She handed the robes over with a bow. On instinct alone, the crowd beneath him started to clap, but none of them seemed to be sharing in the excitement clearly overtaking Kiyoshi. He took the robes under one arm, using the other to secure a pair of vials from the racks before he returned down into the crowd. The enthusiasm seemed to almost be swelling out of him as he walked up to Sango, winking once again.

?Well, I?m not dead, so I figure you guys should be fine up there.?

Maybe none of them were certain what had inspired Kiyoshi so thoroughly, but given that he hadn?t lost any limbs up at the podium the general aura of fear started to wear away. As the next cadet stepped up to the plate, the crowd watched him more out of curiosity than fear as he was made to recite the same oath Kiyoshi had. Just like Kiyoshi, the words started off uncertain and awkward, but grew in intensity and determination as he continued, until by the end he seemed fully ready to accept his duty. Oi offered him a small smile as he made his way back down, looking towards Kiyoshi with a knowing grin.

This cycle continued with the rest of the candidates. Awkwardness giving way to confidence by the time they made it to the last few words of the oath, any trace of the earlier concern disappearing. Each time, they?d seemed almost hypnotised during the speech, coming down with a new aura of devotion and trust that they?d never had beforehand. At last, all but one of the students had undergone the rite and become Initiates. Oi?s attention turned to the final cadet, with the same severe look she had given the last eleven.

?Cadet Sango-san. I assume you know the drill by now.?

She sure did. There honestly didn?t seem to be much to the procedure in the end. Stand behind podium, declare oath, get robes, end of story. She seemed slightly underwhelmed as she took her place, seeing only two vials remaining on the rack.

Still, there was something going on here. Something she hadn?t been made aware of, a hidden trick to this ritual that hadn?t been passed on to her yet. Either way, it hadn?t killed anyone yet, so it couldn?t possibly be THAT drastic.

Sango looked out into the crowd, watching them all look at her with what could only be anticipation. It felt as if they were all privy to some secret that she hadn?t been told yet, and it worried her. She looked to Oi for comfort, and quickly realised it was the worst idea she?d had in months. The stone-cold glare of the Sensei practically froze her to the spot.

?Alright. Do I need to repeat it again for you??

Sango shook her head. Eleven times had been more than enough to memorise a five-line verse, thank you very much. She stood straight, starting the oath on her own. They were just a few words, after all.

?My body is one with the ocean-?

The instant the last word left Sango?s mouth, the world changed.

-----

She wasn?t fast enough to react to the transformation. All she made out was a bright white flash before the room disappeared entirely. She felt a sudden chill across her whole body, and the sound around her grew muffled as if there were water in her ears.

A few seconds later, Sango realised there very much was water in her ears. Not to mention everywhere else around her.

?Aah-!??

She quickly clasped a hand around her mouth, panicking. She had been in the hall a second ago, and now she was...where was she? She didn?t even recognise these waters, and she?d taken time off to examine the whole area around the branch. This may as well have been the other side of the world, she recognised it that much. She hadn?t had time to take a breath either, and she couldn?t see the surface from here. The old technique came back to her, and she let out a few bubbles so she could reorient herself.

Or at least, she tried. She exhaled as deeply as she could, but not a single bubble escaped from her lips. It was as if she wasn?t even underwater, and as she quickly found out breathing in was just as natural to her.

?...Some kind of illusion??

Somehow she had been sent to this place mentally, but not physically. Her actual body was probably still back at the grand hall, staring out blankly into space. This was strange magic, the sort that no member of the Del-Sancti would have been able to perform. It was the work of another creature entirely, one Sango had never met in the flesh, but she couldn?t think of any creatures in the sea that still remembered the old ways, let alone knew how to perform high-level spells like that. So then what could it have been?

Her question was soon answered as a head popped out from within a nearby cave.

Sango blinked a few times at the sight of the girl emerging from the darkness. There was nothing astounding about her as a human, besides the fact that she was probably several kilometres underwater and not obviously drowning. She was beautiful, in a way unlike Sango had ever seen before; her long blonde hair seemed almost designed to waver in the water. She looked out towards Sango silently with jade eyes, uncaring that her entire body was exposed to the freezing cold water.

She wasn?t human. That was definite. But that didn?t exactly leave a lot of options on the table. She knew about the other magical creatures of the sea, but she?d been told that they were wiped out long ago as the faith of man died off. Still, from what she?d seen, this girl had every potential of being...

?...a Nereid...?!?

They were said to be the children of Poseidon himself, nymphs that traveled the seas and protected sailors from the worst of storms. Had one truly survived the disappearance? If so, how? Questions began to flood Sango?s mind, but the Nereid didn?t so much as speak a word. Sango noted that the creature probably didn?t even understand a word she was saying - Nereids obviously wouldn?t be fluent in Delphinian.

?My mind is one with the ocean.?

Oi?s voice rang in her head, reminding Sango of what she?d been doing before she found herself on the bottom of an unknown sea. Was it the Aegean? That was where the Nereids came from, and indeed where the Del-Sancti had been formed. Either way, now wasn?t the time, and Sango returned to the oath that had somehow brought her here.

?My mind is one with the ocean.?

Another flicker, but this time Sango stayed where she was. The Nereid looked up at her with a new interest, contemplating, circling around her to examine her body in full. There was a new feeling of understanding between the two, and without even exchanging a word Sango suddenly found herself knowing a good deal more about the Nereid as well. The facts just slipped into her head as if it was the most natural thing in the world. The creature?s name was Nesaea, and she was supposedly the last of her kind with her sisters and father lost to...she didn?t know. No-one did. Sango was here as part of one of the Del-Sancti?s final remaining rituals - in the midnight hour, with the right words and the right location, it was possible for Nesaea to bring a cadet here to see her in spirit, if only momentarily.

?Wait a second.?

The words of the oath suddenly had a good deal more meaning. After the first line - uniting her body with the ocean - she found herself here with the Nereid. After the second - uniting her mind with the ocean - she suddenly found herself understanding the creature?s thoughts.

?Then...what does...?

The Nereid tilted its head slightly, waiting for Sango to finish the oath. She bit her lip, worried about where this was going to take her, but continued anyway.

?My soul is one with the ocean.?

This time, there was no bright flash. The Nereid nodded as Sango recited the third line of the oath.

Then it embraced her.

?Phwee-?!?

Nesaea held Sango close - she?d projected Sango?s form here, so she could still control it. Even if she wasn?t really there, Sango could still feel the Nereid?s silky skin pressing against hers. A pain of warm, slender hands wrapped around her, holding the Delphi tenderly in place. It was a display of affection, and unconsciously Sango heard the creature?s thoughts seeping into her head.

Thank you.

It smiled, holding her closer still. Sango felt as if she?d just been lit on fire - at the same time it was incredibly uncomfortable and thoroughly relaxing. She could tell without asking why the Nereid had such gratitude for her - for the first and perhaps only time, she was being thanked for taking on the duty of the Del-Sancti. Without them, creatures like the Nereid would never have survived this long, and thanks to people like Sango they might just be able to keep on going. They depended on each other.

?...Thus, if the sea dies, I die.?

The words didn?t hold the same magical power any more, but now they held an emotional meaning unlike anything beforehand. Sango wanted to protect this girl from the dirt and filth the humans would taint the water with. But then why stop there? Why not protect the fish, and the plants, and everything else that called the sea home?

It was an excellent question, and one Sango couldn?t find a fair answer to. So she simply chose to defend everything. Every living thing in the waters - every tiny existence, every miniscule cog in the system that was the ocean. All of it was beautiful, and worth giving her all to protect. The last words came out of her mouth with total determination.

?Thus, I will guard this ocean with all my life.?

The Nereid smiled brighter as she finished, blushing slightly. Still holding her close, Nesaea started pulling Sango?s face towards hers, starting to pucker up her lips. She felt frozen in place, not able to respond or resist, as the Nereid?s lips drew closer and closer. She shouldn?t have been able to, but Sango could feel the creature?s breath on her face as their lips were only inches apart.

For a fraction of a moment, she felt something warm touch her lips. Then the bright light that had brought her here flashed once again.

-----

?Congratulations, Sango-san.?

Sango needed a moment to get her bearings as she found herself in the grand hall again. There was no sign she?d ever left - she wasn?t even wet, despite having been underwater all of two seconds again. The effect of the experience, though, was clearly obvious to anyone looking - they could see the determined grin on Sango?s face, the new devotion that had overtaken her just like it had overtaken each of them. Oi wore a small grin in satisfaction.

?By the power invested in me as the Dean of this branch of the Delphini Sanctimonia, I hereby promote you to the rank of Initiate.  Do us proud.?

She took the last bundle of clothing and handed it to Sango with care. The ex-cadet accepted the gift, holding it carefully in one hand. The fabric felt unbelievably soft in her hand, almost impossibly so. Compared to the business-like manner of her old attire, this was equivalent to moving from the human outfit of a vest and pants to a full-fledged ballroom dress. She almost squealed in excitement, already looking forward to tomorrow morning when she could wear it for the first time. Sango stepped away from the podium, quickly snatching at the two remaining vials with the other hand.

?You have no need to worry about tomorrow?s breakfast - your residential klaxons have been disabled, and as Initiates you now have the right to eat as you wish even without your meal tickets. You will be given tomorrow morning off, since you have stayed up long past curfew for this ceremony, but I will expect to see each of you reporting for duty by noon tomorrow. Am I understood??

This time, there was no hesitation or fear in the response.

?YES, SENSEI!?

It hadn?t been the ceremony they?d expected, but perhaps that was part of the point. If they had been told they would meet a member of a race long-thought extinct in the middle of the oath, would it have had the same meaning? The same impact? It had been fantastic, but in a way that passing it on would ruin the experience for whoever followed.

They?d lost a lot to the advancement of technology, but apparently the Delphini Sanctimonia still had a few magical tricks up its sleeve after all.

[Iced Fairy]

Looks just fine to me.  A nice "secret society" initiation writeup.

[FinnKaenbyou]

Putting this whole segment up at once because it eventually brings back Jack who I swear is the best part of this whole damn story.

-----

It was strange waking up on her own the next morning. The entire experience the night before was almost unreal, dreamlike to the point where Sango had to convince herself it was real by looking at the bundle of clothing beside her bed. She’d grown so used to the infernal sounds of the klaxon that it felt distinctly like something was missing from her morning as she finally emerged from bed. It was still an hour or two before she was expected to arrive at the academy to receive her first orders, so she decided it was time she could savour by herself.

By savour, she basically meant enjoy wearing her new robes for the first time. She still wore the same basic protection beneath it, but for the first time in her life she was going to wear clothes that looked like actual clothes. She started with taking off her old belt, ragged and torn as it was. It was almost unrecognisable compared to the clean, neat belt she’d been given at the ceremony, so there was no need to stay attached to the inferior model.

The shirt was next. Sango spent a moment rubbing at the fabric with two fingers before working up the courage to put it on. She’d had daydreams and fantasies about how these robes would feel on her skin, to the point where it was almost impossible for the reality to match her fantasy.

It did so regardless. The fabric was no doubt of the highest calibre, and it had been washed before the ritual so it was like new. It was light enough not to impede her swimming, but rubbed against her bare arms in a way that made her grin like an idiot. The shirt was slightly loose on her - unsurprising, since these clothes weren’t made to fit. They were inherited, passed down by those who had reached the higher ranks and those who had grown too old to serve. Sorting them and finding which hand-me-downs would fit who was a nightmare for the unlucky Initiate tasked with clothing their newest accomplices.

Now came the skirt. She’d never worn one of these before, and as she started pulling it up around her waist she was slightly concerned that it was as loose as the shirt was. When the only consequence was baggy sleeves, that wasn’t so much of a problem; when bagginess meant the skirt fell to your feet and left the lower half of your body visible for anyone walking past, it was another story. She wasn’t sure what would attract more awkward glances on the surface - being bare beneath that skirt, or looking like she was wearing a swimsuit under her everyday clothing.

Either way, she now understood that the last piece of equipment - the belt - had a lot more importance than she’d initially given it credit for. As she tied it around her waist, she felt the loose fabric of the skirt hold in place down her thighs. It felt damp, strangely, even though it looked dry as a bone. Perhaps it was some sort of enchantment performed on the fabric that no-one had figured out how to dispel - if it even could be done any more.

Sango allowed herself to make the most of these new pieces of clothing while she had the privacy of her own home. She remembered hearing somewhere that you only felt the sensation of clothes on your skin for a few minutes before your body got used to it, so she made the most of the time. She wriggled her hands around in the sleeves, played with the frills on the skirt, and started making all sorts of redundant knots in the belt. There was a time for professionalism, though, and after attaching her two new vials to her waist Sango pulled herself together to start the walk to the academy in her new uniform.

Kiyoshi, for a change, had started the day ahead of her. Maybe he hadn’t been sitting around enjoying the new outfit, especially given the glum look on his face. For once it was Sango who came up from behind with a hand on the shoulder, a role reversal that brought a smirk to her face.

“Morning, honey.”

Kiyoshi went straight as an arrow, his hands suddenly on his legs. Clearly, not everyone was happy with the outfits that came with the rank of Initiate. She’d heard a few disappointed mumblings among the male graduates on the way home, but now that the clothes had actually come on the awkwardness had increased tenfold.

“Morning, Sango. I’m guessing you’re gonna tell me about how pretty I look in this?”

“Nah, nothing like that. I know it’s awkward and all, but you’ll get used to it. There’s apparently some country across the seas where men wear skirts as a national dress.”

Kiyoshi blinked once or twice at that, certain that Sango was making it up. The honest look on her face, though, convinced him to buy the story, however ridiculous it might have been. One thing Sango had never managed to get her head around was lying.

“Well, whatever. At least none of the other guys are gonna make fun of me.”

He pulled Sango in, rubbing shoulders with her. Sango blushed, feeling the fabric of her shirt pressing against his. She was aware of the sensation again, but there was no enjoyment now.

“Gotta say, though, it looks good on you. In fact, if I didn’t know you better, I’d almost say you were cute.”

Sango squirmed in Kiyoshi’s grip, but only slightly. He was warm and calming, in a way that seemed to melt the unease she was feeling. It was times like this that she almost felt like she could cope with Kiyoshi - that there might in fact be a half-decent guy behind the snarky, proud exterior. A guy who might actually have more to offer her than a well-timed quip and a wry smile. A man who she’d be willing to let into her quarters, smiling knowingly, pressing his body against hers like this as he helped to take her shirt off-

“P-Phweee!”

Too far. Her brain had taken the tangent and followed it as far as it could possibly go. There was no way she was letting Kiyoshi do that. There was too much risk, too much chance that beneath the exterior of an asshole he was, in fact, still an asshole. She couldn’t be sure, and when the stake of her own, ahem, purity was up for grabs, it wasn’t a risk she was willing to take.

She liked Kiyoshi, but there were some things she would never think to trust him with.

“G-Get away from me, okay? Pretty sure personal space is part of the promotion offer...!”

Her voice was harsher than she’d intended, but by the time she’d noticed the words were already out. She felt Kiyoshi’s arm going tense, but she couldn’t bring herself to look up into his eyes. It was a slow, painful act, but he gradually let go of her and took a subtle step to the side.

“Uh. Sorry.”

The hurt was blatantly obvious in Kiyoshi’s voice. It wasn’t anger, though; if anything, he sounded angry at himself for getting closer than Sango was comfortable with. The awkward silence that so often reigned between them returned once again, both of them looking desperately for something that would break the deadlock but neither of them willing to take the first step.

Sango was conflicted. Maybe she’d been harsh about it, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t right. Maybe Kiyoshi liked her, but maybe he didn’t; if he did, he wasn’t giving her any obvious signs, and even then how could she be sure he was telling the truth? She wasn’t comfortable with the idea she’d have to give himself over to him, and she didn’t think she ever would be. Her arms wrapped around her chest unconsciously in concern.

Kiyoshi, on the other hand, was just plain angry. Not at Sango, but at himself. He’d overshot again, and for the umpteenth time he’d managed to do more harm than good with his advances. He was hardly a smooth talker - when he spoke, he only knew how to make snide remarks and petty comments. Honest, caring words were beyond him, so the only way he knew to get his feelings across was through gestures - a friendly handshake, an arm on the shoulder, things like that. He tried to make use of this limited vocabulary to pass on his thoughts to Sango - let her know that she meant a lot to him - but everything he tried seemed to just push her further away. Was he too rough? Was it because he couldn’t find words to go along with his actions?

Or was it just because Sango wanted nothing to do with him? He couldn’t be sure, and the potential was too much for him to linger on.

They walked on silently all the way to the academy. They’d been given orders to visit the Sensei one at a time to receive their orders, so as Kiyoshi’s footsteps grew slower behind her Sango saw no need to ask why he was falling back. She was more than happy to step away from this discussion - it would achieve nothing, and all it would do was hurt both of them. By the time they bumped into each other again things would have returned to normal, and it would have been just like this entire encounter had never happened.

As Sango walked onwards into the academy on her own, Kiyoshi took a moment to vent his anger on a nearby wall. The marble crumbled the tiniest fragment beneath his fist. If he had allowed himself to let out all of his feelings - the guilt, the anger, the frustration - he would have taken the building apart long before he was through. Maybe Sango was happy with keeping their relationship in this self-made limbo, but he wasn’t.

-----

There was a strong temptation to run away like she had before - take a trip to the surface and spent some time by herself to relax. She wouldn’t even have to worry about sneaking away anymore - now that she’d taken on the rank of Initiate, she could leave through the main gate any time she liked. But that trip would take her an hour at the very least, and the Sensei would have been furious if she showed up late for her first day of work. Sango took a deep breath and willed herself onward - when there was no time for it, she could fight off the urge to wallow surprisingly well.

The corridor leading to the Sensei’s office was a testament to the age of the facility, and not in a good way. The carpet beneath her was occasionally stained with fragments from the stone walls, which were almost universally chipped and in poor shape. More than once, a concerned librarian had stated that the place could come apart any minute, but the claims were never taken seriously. The Delphi had been wise enough to give their buildings a good bit of resilience in terms of age, and it was only thanks to that ingenuity that the building had stayed standing even this long. It wasn’t a pretty sight to look at, but it did its job well.

The corridors to Sango’s sides spanned out into unlit, disregarded corridors. There had been a larger population here once, as many as 500 members of the Del-Sancti on duty at once. That was the general size of other branches, and given the partnership scheme there was little reason for that number to fall disastrously low. The Far East branch, though, was an exception - its numbers had fallen drastically, with its waters hosting a threat that saw little concern elsewhere in the world.

Man.

The Delphi usually never revealed their presence, of course, simply presenting themselves in dolphin if necessary. The problem was that in these areas, dolphins were prized for their meat as much as anything, and there had been several cases of Delphi being caught among the unfortunate pod that was being rounded up for the slaughter. At that point, as if in cruel irony, whatever magical element the creature had carried would vanish, leaving the humans feasting on apparently regular dolphin.

There had been specialist classes on the dangers of human fishing for agents in the field, but they were easily forgotten in the heat of the moment. The humans had devised a clever scheme to aid them in their capture - they’d approach the pod and confuse them with violent banging on metal rods, leading the puzzled dolphins into a corner where they were unable to escape. Reports of Delphi as high-ranking as the Journeymen falling prey to this tactic made for unpleasant breakfast discussion among the Initiates and students. Still, each of them was confident enough in their own ability to say they’d never fall for such a simple trick.

Or at least, that was what they said in public. Some of them said it, but didn’t quite mean it.

Sango needed to bite her lip and look down, taking sudden interest in the stains riddling the floor. Seeing these abandoned corridors was a harsh reminder that there were dangers out there that had taken out many a well-trained Delphi in the past. The more she looked and wondered, the more she pondered a question that she didn’t want in her head for a moment.

Am I next?

-----

The Sensei had been very specific with the setting of her office, much to the chagrin of the students who’d been made to put it together. Perhaps the most infuriating feature was the door - once a simple wooden door with knobs and hinges, it had been replaced with a slight, fragile paper covering which Sango had to slide to one side to enter within. The entire thing reeked of someone who had taken their obsession ever so slightly too far, but Oi had worked her way to this position through sheer ability so Sango had no right to complain.

The room within continued with the atmosphere that the door had suggested would lie within. The stone flooring had been built over, and now her bare feet stepped on well-kept wooden planks. The room had been decorated to resemble the dojos used by humans training in the martial arts, so there was little in the way of decoration. A few scrolls had been hung on various walls, spouting words of wisdom in Oi’s favourite language. They were phrases used by the samurai of old - things like ‘when the enemy is in your range, so too are you in the range of your enemy’. Relevant for swordfighting, Sango thought to herself, but surely not the sort of wisdom to pass on in the Del-Sancti.

Oi had seen a few students previously today, but she had not moved from her spot on the floor. Her legs were neatly crossed, and she stood upright in the sort of perfect posture her students had learned by osmosis. Lying in front of her, the blade she always carried on her person had been unsheathed, a pattern of white marks running along its silver edge, flowing up and down the metal akin to a tide. They called it hamon - a pattern produced on the blade as a result of the tempering process. Sango knew nothing of the blade’s age, heritage, or whether it was even genuine - but she could tell that an edge as sharp as that would tear through flesh like paper.

The Dean was looking down at the sword in full contemplation as Sango entered. She looked up for perhaps a moment or two, taking in Sango’s form hovering over her. Then she slowly pulled herself to her feet, seeing no need to rush as she lifted herself from her meditation of sorts.

“Ah, Sango-san. I trust you had a pleasant sleep?”

Sango nodded in response. She may have had an awkward time getting here, but the night before hand was one that had etched itself into her memory in the best possible way. She’d slept soundly, dreaming of conquest and promotions.

Naturally, Oi didn’t care about that. The question was a formality, a necessary waste of time before moving on to the discussion that actually mattered. She reached into her kimono, pulling out a piece of paper on which she’d listed the new Initiates and their posts.

Sango’s heart soared. Where would she be posted? An inner port around the coast of Honshu, where there’d be all sorts of waste for her to take care of? The outskirts of a chemical plant, or an oil field? Surely they’d give her something difficult, something that gave her a chance to really prove herself to the higher ups-

“Now, to business. You have been tasked with guarding the waters around the Izu islands. You will be working the six-day post, of course.”

Sango paused. Then pondered.

Then frowned.

“Phwee...? But there aren’t any chemical plants or anything around there...”

“No, but the area is almost home to several active volcanoes. You are to watch the area for any sign of danger - I should not need to tell you how much damage eruptions can deal to our waters, Sango-san.”

Sango had to work hard to hide her disappointment at that. Oi was right, true - there were plenty of volcanoes around the Izu Islands that posed a threat to the purity of the waters, but that meant that Sango would basically be stranded out in distant waters waiting for something to go wrong. There would be no chance to prove herself unless there was an outright catastrophe on one of these islands, and that was hardly an event she wanted to happen.

On top of that, the Izu islands were on the south coast of Japan, just off the island of Honshu. That would put her on the wrong side of the country to get back to base, so she’d was going to have to work the long haul, as they called it - six days of work with one day devoted to returning to base and recuperating. Normally she’d welcome the chance to work overtime, but six days of almost no activity was likely to drive her insane.

“Any questions, Sango-san? I’m certain you know how to reach the Izu islands from here. Or is your geography lacking...?”

Oi’s words held a fragment of irritation in them. She probably hadn’t wanted the conversation to last even this long, and her disapproval with Sango’s continued presence was growing more obvious by the second. At least once, Sango caught the Dean’s eye looking down towards the blade on the floor in contemplation, or perhaps consideration.

The message came across loud and clear.

“N-No, Sensei! I’ll get right on it!”

Sango found herself moving eagerly towards the door, trying not to act too flustered. There were no real preparations to make, and she wasn’t expected to stay at headquarters now that she’d been given a post to guard. Her pace grew hurried, desperate, as she made her way down the corridor, only returning to normal when she was sure the Sensei’s eye wasn’t glaring at her from a distance.

Kiyoshi still stood around the entrance, waiting for Sango to make her exit before he received his orders from the Dean. This was another part of their relationship - it had been too soon since their last ‘incident’, and so for both of their sakes they chose not to interact until things had properly calmed down. A week away would definitely be long enough, and Sango would be getting all sorts of playful commentary from him by the time she returned for her day off.

That gave her the entire walk from the academy to the airlock to think to herself about her new role. To an extent, it was the challenge she’d been looking for - first on the scene in the event of an ecological disaster? That would undoubtedly earn her brownie points if she did her job well. But the whole thing still rubbed her the wrong way - there was no way she could stop the volcano erupting if it happened, no way she could stop it from devastating the island and possibly killing its inhabitants. All she could do in the end was try to control the damage and stop it from taking apart the ocean’s wildlife as well as the life on land.

That powerlessness, that feeling of inadequacy...it had Sango feeling uncertain even before she’d stepped a foot out of the branch. She’d be fine for now, while the job was simple and braindead, but suddenly the idea of being around when mother nature went on its killing spree while she couldn’t do a thing to stop it had her wanting to keep her days as uninteresting and dull as possible.

The guards at the airlock saw no reason to stop Sango as they saw her Initiate uniform. They hadn’t taken the time to learn names, and one of them had only just enough friendliness to spout out the words ‘good luck’ before she entered. There was a loud humming noise as the door closed behind her, which was her cue to start preparing herself for flooding. A few deep breaths later, the room began to fill rapidly with water, leaving Sango floating around as the main gate to the branch opened. She appreciated the design of her robes now as she swam in them - even the waving, flailing skirt was doing nothing to kill her momentum. She may as well have not been wearing it in that regard.

The journey, at least, would be calm. She wouldn’t have time to worry about all this nonsense when she was busy propelling herself through the water. She would be too busy kicking her way across the seabed to let her mind wander, but it would likely be a different story entirely when she arrived.

-----

The rest of the new Initiates stumbled into Oi’s room eventually, each one pulling her away from her meditations for an infuriating instant. Now, though, all twelve newcomers had been assigned their posts, and the woman could focus her mind in peace. There had been the occasional complaint, but she had taught these children better than to argue against her. After all, it was her way or no way around here.

Oi took her original position on the floor, closing her eyes and starting with deep, thoughtful breaths. These moments of clarity, sudden consciousness, were without a doubt the most useful times in her day. They helped her focus, concentrate when a normal Delphi’s attention would have long since been torn apart by the dozens of tasks she had been assigned. It helped to make up for the fact that her time away from work was typically not long enough to validate 8 hours of sleep.

She had just about pulled herself back into relaxation now. She’d worked the memories of the greenhorns out of her head, ending at last with the nervous look on Kiyoshi’s face as he learned about his post on the south coast of Kyushu. She had no time for their petty complaints or problems; she needed results, and that was exactly what she had trained them to produce.

After a few minutes of contemplation, Oi slowly opened her eyes. The world hadn’t changed in the time she’d closed them, but she was viewing it with the fresh mind of a woman who’d slept for more than two hours the night before. Pulling herself to her feet, she prepared herself for the long afternoon ahead of her - taking in reports, keeping track of the newest construction work on the human coasts, and writing reports to the Council of the Delphi on a weekly basis, signed in triplicate in basic Delphinian. She always hated writing in that language - it felt unrefined and brutal compared to the kanji she’d come to adore. On top of that, she had the upcoming Council Forum to prepare for - a meeting of the Deans of all the Del-Sancti’s branches across the world, set in the Aegean Sea where the race had been given life. It would be a long journey, and she would have no time for brief moments of meditation like this. She would savour this moment for as long as possible.

This, unfortunately, wasn’t very long.

“Powernappin’, huh? Well, guess I’d be a little tired out with a schedule like yours.”

The calm and relaxing atmosphere in the room was shattered in an instant. Oi had another guest, and it was the most annoying guest that could possibly have taken the time to visit her right now.

“Jack-kun, I hope you are not thinking to disrespect my meditations.”

“Nothin’ of the sort, boss. I’m open-minded ‘n’ all, and it works for you, doesn’t it?”

Jack was playing with the paper door that Oi had ordered to put up, swinging it open and closed in rapid succession. Oi was half expecting the thing to snap off entirely with the force he was using, but the foreigner eventually just closed the door behind him as he made his way into the Dean’s office. Every time he entered Oi could see his eyes darting around the room; probably looking for something interesting to focus his attention on, and as usual finding nothing that caught his interest.

“This place could use a little lightenin’ up, don’t you think? Pretty dull for an executive office.”

“You have something to say to me, Jack-kun. Out with it.”

Oi had never been a fan of the idle chatter Jack was so fond of. It was one item in a long list of irritations Jack was responsible for, and to list them all would take more time than Oi was willing to waste on the matter. Jack paused for a moment, pulling himself back onto whatever train of thought had led him here.

“Ah, sorry. Just heard about the postin’ of the new recruits, and I was wantin’ to clear a few things up with you.”

Oi groaned. Repeating herself always gave her the feeling she hadn’t been listened to the first time, but she was in a good enough state of mind to give the man the audience he craved so badly.

“First of all, I couldn’t help but notice we gotta lot of graduates this year. I mean, twelve’s not that large a number, but I can’t remember the last time I ever saw more than half a class pass the exam.”

Oi’s face showed no obvious emotion as Jack spoke. When she made an effort to conceal her emotions, it was almost impossible to get any sort of reaction out of her. Jack had learned that through experience.

“Not just that. I’ve been to plenty of branches in my time, and this is the first time I’ve seen the exam reduced to a practical. I know you’ve got all this talk about danger and privacy, but I don’t see what you hope to gain by sendin’ them out there with no experience at all. Not just that, but it’s a helluva lot harder to cheat in a real test compared to fillin’ in a few sheetsa’ paper. I’m making sense here, right?”

Oi remained as expressionless as ever. Perhaps someone who didn’t know Jack as well as she did would think that he wanted to check if the students had been swapping answers. But from that all-knowing glint in his eye, Oi was well aware that his suspicions were somewhere else entirely.

“I mean, teachers can play favourites in exams too and give people marks they don’t deserve. I mean, imagine this - what if the man runnin’ the exam looks at the results, decides he’s not gettin’ enough graduates if he sticks to the book, and gives ‘em all passes? He could just swear the Initiate markers to secrecy ‘n’ you’d have 12 cadets getting through on no real qualification. All hypothetical, obviously.”

He acted out the scenario with overblown postures of filing through imaginary papers and throwing the entire lot into the garbage behind him. It was all passed on with a comedic aura, one which would have won over anyone else listening to him. Oi, though, knew his accusation was nowhere near as ‘hypothetical’ as he claimed it was.

Besides that, it was also true.

She would have had three graduates from this year if she’d stayed firm, and that just wouldn’t be enough. If it took allowing those students with slightly poorer marks to go on duty, so be it. They would learn on the job, and in the end it would be as if they had all passed anyway. She didn’t expect the pupils themselves to question the fact - they would be too busy celebrating to consider the opportunity.

Jack, though, was not so easily fooled. He was onto her, she could feel it. Even if they looked otherwise playful, his eyes bore into hers in a search for guilt or nerves. A sign that his suspicion was accurate, that this year’s class wasn’t actually a group of a dozen masterminds.

She offered him nothing.

“We have discussed this on several occasions, Jack-kun. If you are unhappy with how I test my students, you are welcome to seek employment at another branch.”

It was perhaps the most solid answer she could have given. It would do nothing to win Jack over, but most importantly it gave him no confirmation of his theories, no sign of weakness in her character. Without that, he had no right to press the point, and he would simply have to leave his accusations unspoken.

“No, boss, I’m fine. Just wanted to mention it in case you were thinkin’ of changin’ stuff-”

“Next point, Jack-kun. You have already been here for longer than I would have liked.”

Jack was cut off mid-sentence, and was clearly unnerved. He shuffled his tie around in recovery, looking to save face now that his initial query had gone awry.

“Ah, sure. Sorry. The other one’s just confirming an order you gave one of my kids...thing is, I heard you posted Sango around the Izu islands. That right?”

Oi nodded. She wished with all her heart that was all he wanted to know, but from the look on his face she could tell it wasn’t. The smile he always wore was a sign of nothing - it was there during his highest moments and his lowest of lows. The eyes, though, were a better sign of his actual thoughts, and now he was looking intently into her own eyes. There was an answer he was wanting, and that wasn’t it.

“Before you start your rash accusations, I didn’t send your star pupil to the islands for personal reasons. I simply think that in the event of an ecological disaster of the scale those volcanoes threaten, it is wise to have an able agent on the scene from the start.”

“I’m not talkin’ about that, boss.”

Oi raised an eyebrow. Jack’s posture loosened slightly as his words took on something of a joking tone.

“Just that the last agent we posted in that area came back with a few nasty rumours about the local fishermen. Dolphin drives and such. You were aware of that, I’m hopin’?”

Again, Oi nodded. She could tell where this conversation was going now, and she had her answer ready before Jack even asked the question.

“Now, here’s the thing. You know about it. I know about it. Does Sango know about it?”

There was a pause as the two glared each other down. Neither budged so much as an inch. This sort of miniature confrontation was the sort they went through on a regular basis, and there were no winners in their battle of wills.

Eventually, Oi shook her head, her expression untarnished by feelings of guilt.

“What, may I ask, would we gain from telling her? The last thing we need at that post is an Initiate who is afraid to do her job because of a potential human threat. Besides, she has been educated in how to deal with that sort of situation, so I see no need for you to worry.”

“You’re puttin’ a total newcomer in a position where she’s likely to get caught off guard and get herself killed? Sure, no need to worry at all.”

Oi’s brow furrowed.

“Jack-kun, are you questioning my judgement?”

Jack smiled yet again. God, she hated that smile. There was a point where a bright and cheery face went from friendly to painfully insincere. His students weren’t around him long enough to truly understand it, but Oi had seen more than enough of Jack to know that the smile was a sign of absolutely nothing. His eyes shone with serious intent, though, the true windows to the soul behind that face of his.

“’Course not, boss. I was just, y’know, curious.”

Now this conversation was starting to take a turn for the awkward. Oi was divided between telling Jack to leave now and letting him say whatever was on his mind. Pride won out over fear, though, and she welcomed the comment with open arms.

“Oh? Curious about what?”

The moment she’d said the words, she could tell she would regret it. Once again, the same dumb smile was pasted on his face, but an eyebrow raised itself upwards in anticipation. He had caught her in a trap, and he was well aware of it. Now that she’d asked the question, there was nothing she could do to stop him from responding.

“I just figured you’d be more careful around dolphin hunters. Y’know, based on personal experience.”

Oi froze. There were facts she would rather have kept to herself, and he’d just hit on one of them. She had no idea how or why, but someone must have passed on the story to him as a deal of some sort. There was only one use he could have for that sort of information, and that was to catch her off guard at a time like this. It had worked flawlessly, and for the first time Jack could see the indomitable Sensei struggling to find an answer.

“You sure there was nothin’ special about that assignment, boss? ‘Cause I trust you enough to take your word for it.”

Jack was entirely ignorant of his superior’s nervousness, wearing that damned smirk of his. He tipped his hat downwards slightly as if in self-congratulation. He could make out the ragged breaths of his boss as she struggled to decide on an answer, and failed to come up with something poetic enough for her liking. She had lost the calmness her meditations had worked so hard to produce - it took all her self-control not to grab her blade from the floor and wipe that smile right off Jack’s face.

“I...I would appreciate if you left personal matters out of this, Jack-kun! I am impartial enough to put my own feelings to one side when business is concerned, and I’m frankly offended that you would accuse me of otherwise!”

Jack allowed himself a small chuckle at the Dean’s expense. He’d found out everything he needed to know, and turned away to leave without so much as a farewell. His laugh echoed down the hallway, still making its way into the dojo-like room long after he had left.

She hated him. Hated him with all her heart. He was a foreign savage, all too good at finding what made people tick and twisting it to his own advantage. It was how he’d managed to find a position at the academy - he made sure to win the votes of some of the more acclaimed Sages in the branch by reminding them of events they’d rather have forgotten, and promising that he would strive to make sure those mistakes would never be repeated.

Maybe she was an unpopular leader, but Oi took pride in her honesty of character. She had never played the friendly type, simply because she had never been anything remotely social. She was business-like and methodical in all her ways, and never made an attempt to hide that fact. Jack, though, hid his cunning and initiative behind a friendly smile, like the angler-fish that lured its prey in with a light before swallowing it whole.

Oi could feel another headache coming on. She stumbled back to her usual spot on the floor, adjusting the blade so that it lay right in front of her once again. She would need another session of meditation to get through the day now - or the anger she wanted to unleash on Jack would inevitably be delivered upon some unwitting, innocent Initiate.

She couldn’t fire him. As far as everyone else knew, he was a star teacher, the best the Far East branch had ever taken in. More than once Oi had been praised for taking the risk, though she’d never stoop so low as to accept that praise. He was a prodigy, a virtuoso in the eyes of the public.

“...Hm.”

An idea formed in her head as she cleansed it of all unnecessary thoughts. It floated around, growing more and more refined the longer she dwelt on it, until at last it was a bright white ball of genius. She opened her eyes again, a self-satisfied smile appearing on her face.

Perhaps I have been too harsh on Jack-kun. A man of his ability should be more than able to run this academy in my stead, should he not...?

[Kasu]

Oh geez...

Looks like things are about to go south... :ohdear:

[Esifex]

...Politics. Blegh. I wash my hands of that weirdness!

Although it looks like Oi and Jack both are fixing to unleash tonnes of awesome all over the place anyways, so let's wait and see where it goes :D

[Iced Fairy]

Three out of twelve?  Hm...  Not a good sign for the teachers or the students.

And knowing where this goes only amuses me more.

[FinnKaenbyou]

So yeah, I finished 50k, and I've been tweaking stuff rather than really making progress. I need to really stop with that. -_-

-----

Sango?s post was, in a word, unnerving.

The Izu islands were good way apart, so she would only typically have time to watch each island on its own for an hour or so before moving on to the next. She could afford to not be right next to an island if its volcano were to let loose - the heaving pillars of smoke would be something of a giveaway.

The islands themselves varied in size considerably - some were large enough to populate several thousand humans, while others were inhabited only by a few hundred, and some held no trace whatsoever of human life. Compared to the bustling, technologically dependent lives of those on Japan?s larger islands, the people here lived simpler, slower lives without the various gadgets and gizmos that people insisted they couldn?t live without. There was electricity, perhaps, but it was far from being the next Shibuya in terms of cultural advances.

All that mattered to Sango was that the people here seemed to care about what happened to their waste. Maybe life on a tiny island brought the whole litter issue to the forefront, considering that litter was more obvious in a small space than in a large square. Throwing it out to sea wasn?t an option either, so on most of these islands the residents would gather their garbage together at the end of the week, to be ferried off to the mainland where it could be better taken care of.

See, why can?t all the humans think like that?

Watching from a safe distance out in dolphin form, Sango found herself immersed in the simple everyday life of the townspeople on these tiny islands simply because she had so little to do otherwise.  Life here seemed simple and unrewarding, with no-one that could be considered truly rich (save the elderly living out their last years in privacy on the company pension). There was no ambition, no potential to really become well-known or respected beyond the tiny society of the island. On top of that, the smaller islands resembled the tiny villages that always showed up in fiction, where everyone knew everyone else and gossip never expanded beyond who?d bought themselves a new dress during their last trip to Tokyo.

Sango watched these simple lives unfold with what could only be described as confusion. There was no obvious sign that these people were unhappy with their lot in life. Perhaps they could be irritated or saddened at times, but those emotions seemed to be the exception rather than the rule. For the most part, they were happy in anonymity, doing simple jobs for measly wages and living almost unknown lives.

What?s with these people? Do they not know about all the cool stuff they?re missing out on or what?

Sango didn?t know much about human life, but she?d witnessed the last generation of technology being thrown out to sea in droves, and the Izu islands weren?t even close to that level of convenience. There was so much out there that they could earn themselves - bigger homes, one of those fancy ?car? things, all sorts of new outfits and clothes to show off in. Yet here they were, doing nothing to expand and staying stagnant and forgotten.

Maybe they were waiting around for a disaster, just like she was. They would prove themselves when a volcano erupted, and get a big job back on the mainland. That idea went out of her head quickly, though - the odds of drying were too high for anyone sane to risk. Sango was only out here because the water would be nowhere near as badly affected as the land if an eruption were to occur.

Maybe they?re sick...?

Sango nodded to herself in confirmation as she found her answer. It didn?t make any sense for people to avoid expanding - what point was there in a life where nothing you did had any real meaning, and you died unremembered by everyone save a few loved ones? They were crazy, then - it was the only answer. There had to be a madness hidden inside these otherwise ordinary people. Didn?t there?

She stopped pondering the point after a short while. She wasn?t here to act as a psychologist for these villagers, she was here to act as their janitor and clean up their mess. Or at least, their volcano?s mess. Time wore on, and she found herself working further into the mainland to reach the next island in the archipelago.

She had already decided on a schedule and system. She would sleep in the seas north of the islands, wake up at dawn, and inspect the islands one by one until she had made her way to Tori-Shima in the south. Her only concerns were islands with active volcanoes and (to a lesser extent) any island that was inhabited. After checking the volcano on Tori-Shima, she would turn around and do the same again, returning back to the coast of Hokkaido by the time the sun set. That would be her routine until the sixth day, when instead of sleeping early she?d take the long trip back home to earn herself a much deserved night?s sleep.

Tori-Shima had always been the most disturbing of the islands to visit, because unlike the surrounding islands it was in fact still active. The eruption itself was under the surface, though, so there was no threat to human life, but even approaching it Sango could feel the water around her rising to incredible temperatures. She couldn?t venture too close, lest the water burned her, but she knew that the wildlife here had suffered immensely, both above the surface and beneath it. It hurt to look at, but it was her job to watch and ensure the situation didn?t change from bad to worse. So far, it looked like it was wrecking the ecology no more than it usually was, so it was time to start the trip back towards the mainland.

This routine was now bringing her around to one of the smallest inhabited islands in the group - the island of To-Shima. With a populace of roughly three hundred, it was almost irrelevant to Sango?s interest. There wasn?t even a volcano there for her to be concerned about. If anything, there was more plant life - four fifths of the land was covered in forest, and it was said they turned a glorious shade of red when the camellia flowers within bloomed. Not that a fact like that meant anything to Sango, given that it was halfway through June right now, but it was something to keep in mind a few months down the line.

Most of the houses in the city were packed together on the northern coast, still not numbering more than roughly a hundred homes. The island?s biggest export was fishing, which was always a difficult issue for the Del-Sancti to consider. On one hand, taking fish from the sea was damaging the ecosystem, but mankind had been fishing for food and sustenance since the beginning of time. The Del-Sancti had come to a compromise, agreeing only to intervene if man threatened to hunt a species of fish into extinction, though that didn?t stop a few well-meaning Initiates from ramming into a fishing boat to freak out its passengers.

Hm?

As Sango approached the island from behind on the return trip, she noticed a little house on its own at the island?s west coast. It was a gaudy little house, painted a shade of red that was probably intended to match the surrounding flowers when winter came. A small pier poked out from in front of the house, nothing like the port on the north coast which took in full-grown ferries by the day. It currently housed a smaller fishing boat, perhaps enough to fit a dozen men and their equipment without sinking itself.

Her curiosity piqued, Sango allowed herself to pull closer to the house. It was clearly hand-crafted, built by a man?s blood, sweat, and tears, and the work was of an impressive calibre. It seemed to be old, though, a good fifteen years or so, and the paint was beginning to wear slightly. It reminded her of the academy, in the same way that she would remember one ruin by looking at another. A light still shone in the upper floor, though, so the building was definitely inhabited.

The other thing Sango quickly became aware of as she approached the house was a bundle of clothing lying on the pier. A bright orange dress had grown slightly damp as it lay on the wood, large enough to fit maybe a twelve-year-old girl. The ladder at the side had seen a lot of use as well, and Sango?s eyes turned to the surface of the water just off the coast. A small tube poked a few inches above the ocean, confirming her suspicions.

A human...?

Sango dipped down under the water, looking out to sea. A figure hung in the distance just under the surface, swimming comfortably as it broke away from the shore. She pulled closer behind it, by far the faster swimmer, and the dress?s owner soon came into Sango?s full view. She was clad in a light-orange outfit, reminding Sango of the cadet?s uniform - though student outfits never had those little frills running along the waist. On her feet were those fancy fin contraptions the humans had come up with to help with swimming, and the tube Sango had seen on the surface ran down until it was clamped around the girl?s lips. A snorkel, didn?t they call it? Mankind wasn?t impressive physically, but their knack for inventions was absurd.

The swimmer seemed to be looking around for something, still unaware of Sango?s presence behind her. Sango saw her head tilt, finally stopping on a school of fish approaching from a few metres deep. After a quick breath, the girl tipped downwards and kicked with impressive force to dive further into the water, bringing herself down to the school?s level. Sango?s attention grew more serious - given that she?d already considered these people a little bit kooky, she wouldn?t put it beyond the child to grab a fish straight out of the ocean and serve it for dinner.

The diver didn?t go to that extreme, though, settling for running her hand along the fish as they passed her. She turned around as the school moved on, allowing Sango to see the look of wonder in her bright brown eyes. Her short auburn hair bounced around in the water, a jumbled mess in comparison to Sango?s own.

Then, of course, the girl?s attention turned to Sango.

Uh-oh.

Being seen at this point was hardly a disaster - after all, to this girl?s eyes, Sango was just a dolphin. But given the excited look on her face, the diver was hardly going to let Sango just swim away and get back to her job. Her eyes widened, and she started rubbing her hands together in satisfaction.

It was now that Sango appreciated just how hard it was to move backwards underwater. She couldn?t propel herself backward in this form, and changing back into the human form would be outright suicide. The diver began to approach, her eyes glistening in wonder.

Um. Sorry, on a tight schedule, have to-

Sango felt her mind go blank as the girl?s hand rubbed against her head. She patted her, stroking her gently, and Sango felt her heart melt. She?d never been petted before - Kiyoshi had tried it once during a training session, and it had earned him a slap in the face with her tail. She?d been caught off guard this time, though, and despite every professional instinct she?d ever produced kicking in she found herself staying in place and enjoying the feeling.

This was the first contact she?d had with any living thing in hours. Six days of work made a lonely Initiate out of Sango, and she suddenly appreciated the feeling of being noticed by something that wasn?t a fish. Not just that - she was being appreciated, played with, cared about. It was beautiful, clouding Sango?s judgement in a way that would inevitably earn her a lecture or twelve from the Sensei.

Of course, that was assuming the Sensei had to find out.

...I guess I can afford to be a little late. I?ve got a new fan, and I?m not in the mood to disappoint.

Sango turned to the diver, nodding in satisfaction. The girl looked like she was struggling to keep herself from squealing in excitement, continuing her petting.

It?d only be a few minutes. Nothing that would put her off her schedule, or get her to finish up late. It?d be fine.

Just fine.

Just - oh, that one tingled...

-----

It was a passing thought that she couldn?t remember ever ?playing? with anyone before.

She understood the concept, even if the closest she?d experienced up until now was reading about it in the old plays of the Del-Sancti. Fun was something only really meant for other people - Initiates like her had no time to frolicking about when there were seas to protect and pollution to stop. They were to find pleasure and pride in their work alone, without relief or recreation. Their job was to ensure the creatures of the sea could enjoy the waters in their prime condition, sacrificing their own freedom for the good of all.

Playing around on the job was one of the closest things the Del-Sancti held as a sin. Yet here Sango was, spending time she could have been using to do her duty on nothing useful - and with a human, no less! She would be lucky to keep her belt if the higher-ups heard about this. She?d been told outright that contact with humans of any sort was forbidden, dangerous, prohibited, and every other word they could pull out from their dictionaries and their plays to prove the point.

But if what she was doing now was a crime against her people, why did it feel so right?

This human girl she had come across seemed thrilled just by Sango?s presence, like her arrival was something of a dream come true for her. She petted Sango endlessly, never tiring of the feeling of her hand running along the dolphin?s back, and Sango likewise would have sat there and let her do it for as long as she wanted. It wasn?t just the strange, comfortable feeling that the contact seemed to bring into her - it was the feeling of acceptance, of affection, the sort that the Del-Sancti had discarded long ago out of apparent necessity. No Delphi had ever approached her with this honesty, this purity of character. Kiyoshi had tried, yes, but there was still too much about him that she couldn?t be comfortable with.

Now, though, Sango could tell this girl?s excitement and enthusiasm was entirely genuine. It wasn?t the genuine ?I-love-you-and-always-want-to-be-with-you? affection, but the sort of childish adoration that pulled at the heartstrings. That sort of zest was contagious, seeping into Sango as the diver continued to stroke her. She had to surface every minute or so for a breath, reminding Sango of just how limited these humans were, but every time she came back down as quickly as she could without showing a hint of exhaustion. Petting and stroking slowly advanced into hugs, and as the girl?s arms wrapped around her Sango felt the warm feeling inside of her grow more and more vibrant.

Before she could stop herself, Sango had offered herself as a mount, and the girl quickly sat on her. Her eyes focused on Sango?s tail for a while, running along its length in a way that made Sango shudder. It was sensitive, but the uncomfortable sort, and her passenger quickly learned to leave Sango?s rear end alone.

The girl pointed a finger upwards, indicating that she wanted to be taken to the surface. Sango almost complied, but suddenly a question started to form in her mind.

Crap. Won?t I look pretty smart if I do that?

Dolphins were known in human civilisation to be smarter than most creatures, but wild dolphins probably wouldn?t have been able to equate a finger point to ?go up?. Eventually Sango settled for a compromise, rising upwards slightly so that the girl?s snorkel broke the surface again, but not high enough that she could breathe without the contraption. She seemed satisfied enough with the resolution, and offered Sango another petting as a reward for semi-obeying the order.

Momentarily, Sango wondered how the Del-Sancti would function if employees were paid in pettings. Then she remembered that it would probably be Oi doing the honours, and quickly discarded the idea.

The girl, assuming now that Sango could understand her body language, pointed forwards out to sea.

Uh. You sure about that?

This girl still looked pretty young to Sango. Even as far out as she?d found her there was a risk of her getting in big trouble if her legs were to cramp up, and going out even further was more of a risk still. Sango looked upwards with concern, but the swimmer gave her an eager nod in return. Sango was conflicted - she was taking risks by leading this girl further from the coast, but at the same time she didn?t want to disappoint her. She?d introduced a feeling like nothing Sango had ever felt before, and it would be wrong to take that and offer nothing in return.

In the end, the need to please won out over the need to protect, and Sango started preparing herself for a quick dash. The girl looped her legs around Sango?s body for support, looking almost on the verge of tears. Possibly. It was hard to tell in the water.

Alright. Time to show you what the Del-Sancti?s best Initiate can do!

Sango kicked violently through the sea, picking up speed at an astounding rate. The girl was quickly won over by Sango?s display of haste, clapping as Sango heard a vague squealing noise coming from behind the snorkel. She was going fast, faster than she had ever thought a dolphin could swim.

Not just that, but faster than Sango thought she could ever swim as well.

Wait...huh?

She hadn?t been practicing her stop-start swimming recently, but she was cutting through the water with a speed she?d never had before. She?d never been this fast during training, or during her sneak-trips to the surface, but now she just seemed to have a strength that she?d never possessed back then. Maybe it was just the pressure pushing her on, but Sango was almost as excited by her own pace as her rider was.

And whatever it is...it feels pretty damn good!

How fast was she going? Swordfish speed? No, it had to be more than that. She may as well have been a marlin, she was bursting through the water at that sort of pace. Her passenger grew more and more enamoured by the second, looking set to hug Sango to death the moment she got a chance. They were at breakneck pace now, schools of fish and lumbering rocks passing by at their sides in instants. There was barely enough time for Sango to see another creature coming up in the murky depths before she zoomed past it.

This also applied for obstacles Sango would rather have avoided.

Ah?!

In the poor visibility of the open sea, Sango only just caught sight of the net as it came up on the horizon. It had been placed some time ago - Sango had seen it on the way past -  but it was still very much able to tangle and entwine anything unlucky enough to get caught in it. At the speed she was going, Sango didn?t have enough time to move out of the net?s way. Her passenger only had enough time to widen her eyes in shock as she saw what they were about to collide with.

In a move of total desperation, Sango put on the brakes. She pulled herself to a stop in the water, cutting short her momentum with what she assumed was panic giving her the extra boost she needed to stop short of the net. She felt her back growing lighter as she stopped, her eyes clamped shut without having the nerve to look at the oncoming threat.

Sango took a moment to realise she?d come to a stop and hadn?t wrapped herself up in the trap. She nearly relaxed as she opened her eyes.

Then she realised her passenger hadn?t been so lucky.

!!!

Sango had killed off her momentum so quickly that the girl riding on her back hadn?t been able to keep hold. While Sango had stopped, she?d kept going, and landed herself firmly within the grasp of the net. Sango focused her attention on her the moment she opened her eyes, seeing her start on trying to free herself, but every attempt to undo her bonds only seemed to make them even more complex. Panic was already starting to set in, and the girl wasted precious air with few panicked gurgles, rising out in vain through the now-useless snorkel.

She was in trouble. Deep, deep trouble. Sango was afraid something would happen if she tried this, and sure enough all of her fears had come painfully true. Trying to help however she could, Sango swam over to the net and started to pick at it, but with no arms or fingers to grab at the net with there was little she could do, and even then she was stifled by the girl?s flailing around from inside the net.

There was no other way to look at it. At this rate, the girl was going to drown, and it would all be Sango?s fault.

Dammit, dammit, dammit...!

If only she could transform here - with her hands she?d have a good chance at tearing the net and pulling her back to the surface - but if she was already committing a crime by being here, revealing her true form to a human was a capital offense. It?d be worse than anything else she could possibly have done, deserving of the highest of punishments - death, with no room for negotiation. She would be putting the safety of the entire Del-Sancti in danger by showing her existence to humanity, but if she didn?t she would have no choice but to watch the girl die.

She wondered what Oi would have thought of the situation. Most likely, she?d think that it was a neat way of the situation resolving itself - silencing the witness before she could tell anyone about how strange the dolphin she just met was. Jack...what would Jack say? Dealing with humans was a situation he seemed to deliberately work his way around in class - he?d help with pollutants and sea creatures, but man was a being he offered no advice against.

There was no time for that sort of rambling, though. This was literally a do-or-die decision. Either Sango took the risk and saved her, or she swam away with an innocent girl?s blood on her hands. She caught a glimpse of the trapped swimmer?s eyes - looking set to cry again, but this time for a totally different reason.

That was the tipping point.

Seeing that fear, that panic in the girl?s eyes was enough to numb Sango?s mind. She forgot the rules of the Del-Sancti momentarily, the ones that would have her sentenced to death if she considered even trying to save this human.

How can I call myself a member of the Del-Sancti...

The girl had stopped struggling now, just about resigned to her fate. That made it all too easy for Sango to approach her now, putting her face right up to the next. A moment later, it was a hand reaching out at the ropes instead.

...if I can?t even clean up my own damn mess?!

The diver?s eyes widened as they looked on Sango?s form. The Delphi had no time to pay attention to that as she started ripping at the ropes with her bare hands, putting all of her energy into tearing open a passage for her newest acquaintance. It came to her surprisingly easily - maybe the ropes were frayed with age, but she had freed the girl in half the time she?d thought it would take. Obviously, the girl burst for the surface the instant her bonds were undone, and following her up to the surface Sango was relieved to hear her gasping for air.

?Haah, haah, hah...?

She was panting for dear life, still shaken by the whole ordeal. Without thinking about what she was doing, Sango had put a hand on her shoulder to try and calm her down. It worked its magic, and after she?d caught her breath the girl seemed to be just about relaxed.

Her attention then turned to a somewhat more serious matter. A few words slipped out of her mouth in Japanese.

?You...you?re...?

She looked up at Sango in wonder, but not the same childish wonder she?d had before. This was sheer awe, amazement, confusion, and generally being unable to compute what she was seeing. She could hardly be blamed for it - it was a sight that no human had witnessed in centuries and lived to tell the tale.

Suddenly, the memories of the Del-Sancti and their laws came back to Sango with all the friendliness of a sledgehammer to the face.

?P-Ph...phwee...?

Sango?s body started to shake uncontrollably. Now she was the one panicking. She?d been seen, in the flesh, by a human. The Del-Sancti would have her head for this, no doubt. Her brain went into total lockdown, and instinct alone pushed her into diving deeper into the water at a pace the human couldn?t hope to follow.

?H-Hey, wait!?

The girl called out to her from the surface, but by the time she?d looked back under the water Sango was long gone. The Delphi kept diving deeper, deeper, deeper still, making sure that the girl would never have the tiniest chance of following her, only stopping when she couldn?t see what was in front of her face.

And now, while no-one was looking, she held her head in her hands and cried. Now she understood why playing with the humans was forbidden, but it was far too late.

What have I done...?

-----

As she sat on the seabed, Sango?s brain was firmly in the off position. She was touching without feeling, looking without seeing, hearing without listening. Her day?s routine had grown absolutely mechanical, precise to the minute as she shifted from one island to the next. Her heart had gone numb, and even the sight of the volcano on Tori-Shima wasn?t enough to invoke a response from her. She couldn?t let herself think.

If she started thinking, that face would work its way into her head again. The look of confusion on the girl?s face as Sango showed her true form. The look that had consigned her to a death sentence, simply because she had saved a girl?s life.

Then again, it was Sango who had caused the problem in the first place, wasn?t it? She should have caught herself, slowed down to prepare for anything that came up. Instead she?d let everything come apart, and in the space of a few minutes she had gone from high-hoping Initiate to cold-blooded traitor. Her mind started to play through the worst case scenario the instant she let her guard down - everyone looking at her with disdain and scorn, wishing she?d never been born and eager to see her dead.

They?d get their wish, no doubt. Crimes like hers were worthy of the most gruesome execution the Del-Sancti had to offer - The Traitor?s Penance. It was a fitting name, because the criminal would have more than enough time to reflect on their sins before their sentence was acted out - they were locked in a flooded tank for as long as it would take for them to drown. For a Delphi, that could take hours, and they would either be spent vainly trying to escape their prison or sitting in the corner, regretting their mistakes and begging in vain for salvation. The cadets even passed around horror stories about ghosts who?d been put through the Penance, and were so disturbed by the ordeal they were unable to pass on in spirit.

It was nothing but a rumour, of course, but it did nothing to calm Sango now. In her head she was already playing out the scene - trapped in a tank barely large enough to contain her, feet chained to the floor so she couldn?t kick at the walls and free herself, left simply beating her head against the wall in desperation. Jack and Oi were watching to ensure she didn?t escape, and in all honesty Sango found those expressions they were wearing more frightening than the thought of her own death. The disappointment, the shame-

No!

She stopped herself before she dwindled into outright paranoia. Rational thought, rational thought. Two things. Important things. One. They couldn?t prove it. They didn?t know. No-one saw it. No-one knew about it. She was on duty, and that was all they knew. Two, she?d done no harm. She?d revealed herself to one human child. The kid would probably be written off as hallucinating in a life-or-death situation. They?d suspect nothing. Besides, the people of these islands were definitely a little weird even before then. Who would trust the word of a human who was perfectly fine living one of the dullest lives mankind had to offer?

So she?d screwed up. That was definitely true. But they didn?t have to know about it. Nothing was stopping her from telling the Sensei exactly what she wanted to hear. The seas were fine, the people were as unusual as always, and the volcanoes no closer to erupting than they were the day beforehand. It never had to come up, and no-one would ever have to know about this act.

That would involve lying, though, and Sango was bad at that. If the Dean caught her acting nervous she might press for answers, and if she heard of sightings from local humans about a dolphin-girl she?d be finished. She knew herself well enough to know that she?d never be able to act calm and hide the facts from that stern, ice-cold glare of Oi?s. That left her only one option; an option she approached unwillingly, but out of sheer necessity. She began to kick for the surface, steeling her nerves and preparing herself for the upcoming ordeal.

As a sect that depended on secrecy to function, the Del-Sancti had learned many ways to relieve people of troublesome memories. By the modern day, though, only one such ritual remained, and it was almost impossible to perform on a willing human subject.

Nothing was stopping her from performing the ritual on herself, however.

-----

The sun was setting by the time Sango had re-emerged from the depths. Before anything else, she made sure to swim well away from the islands - this ritual would need her to shift out of dolphin form, and more witnesses on top of what there already were would be the nail in the coffin right now. It was dark, but not so much that she couldn?t see, and more importantly the waters were almost tranquil out here.

She bit her lip. She didn?t know how it felt to have her own memory wiped. A Delphi had never undergone the ritual themselves - it was meant to be used on humans, not on fellow members of the Del-Sancti. For all she knew it wouldn?t work, or it?d take away every memory except the one she wanted to get rid of. She trembled slightly, tempted to just give up on this whole idea.

The image of Jack?s disappointed face flashed in front of her again. Her trembling stopped instantly and permanently. That was right, she thought. She didn?t really have a choice in the matter. If she didn?t give this a try, she?d be dead, and even being an amnesiac had to be better than that. Sango took a deep breath to calm herself again, pulling out her vial of puresalt.

One property the salt had that usually didn?t have any real relevance was the fact that it didn?t react with sea water. As Sango lightly tipped the container, sending tiny amounts of its contents into the ocean around her, they simply floated and bobbed along with the tides. This gave Sango more than enough time to produce a circle along the surface of the water, with herself firmly in the centre.

She leaned back, floating in the water as she looked upwards into the sky. That was the first part done, and unfortunately it had been the easy part. The next segment was considerably more challenging - in order to wipe this memory from her mind, she had to focus on it with all she had. This was why the ritual was almost totally impractical nowadays - it was necessary to have the human both conscious and willing to have their incriminating thoughts erased.

Slowly, but intently, Sango closed her eyes. She let the thought rise upwards again. The girl she?d swam alongside, the fun they?d had together, the disaster she?d barely avoided only to bring about another. It was not a pleasant experience - the feeling of painful realisation that had driven her to flee before returned in full force now. It was a feeling of absolute failure - she had made the biggest mistake she could have made, and it was only by willingly lying about it that she?d stay alive for longer than the next week.

Around her, the ring of salt began to glisten. It had taken almost her full week?s supply to power this - the ritual was meant for Journeymen, if not Sages. She?d have to go without it for a while, but there wasn?t much to use it for here anyway.

She could hear the spell coming to life, a light humming rising upwards for the sea beneath her. She did her best to maintain her focus. She had to keep thinking about that incident for the entire length of the ritual, or there would be all sorts of side-effects for her to cope with, assuming the spell even worked. She had to focus, had to endure, even if she didn?t want to see any of this. Even if she didn?t want to think of the girl again, see her struggling and fighting for her life, all because Sango had been too full of herself...

?Ah...!?

She let out a little cry as the memory came back to her in full force. The feeling of powerlessness, of guilt, swept over her more powerfully than any emotion she could remember. She began to squirm and fidget as if the thoughts were physically attacking her. She expected them to weigh her down and send her straight back down to the seabed at this rate, and it hurt so much, more than anything she?d ever thought of. Surely she could afford to think of something else just for a moment? Yes, just a little distraction. It didn?t matter if the lights around her were growing brighter and the rules specifically said not to derail the train of thought.

Just a little distraction. She?d kept on course for the most part, at least, so it had to work. There was no way

this
could

go

wr

o

n

g

-----

It was the sound of gulls flying above her that lifted Sango from her sleep.

?Nnnh...??

She was confused. She didn?t remember gulls circling the islands; at least, not in the place where she usually slept overnight. She pulled herself up from her idle position, getting her bearing on where exactly she?d wound up. The Izu Islands were a good distance away from here, a good hour?s swim. She raised an eyebrow in confusion - she never came this far out from her post, even during her most thorough inspections.

?...Guess the tides must?ve carried me out here.?

Even as she said it, the idea seemed ridiculous. She had decided to sleep near the northernmost point of the islands, and she?d emerged well to the south of the archipelago. Unless the sea had been deliberately hauling her away from work, it was just about impossible.

And yet, Sango decided to believe it. She had no evidence, but quite simply there was no evidence to suggest otherwise. She thought back to the night before, looking for a clue as to why she?d ended up this far out at sea, but her mind was drawing a total blank. Yesterday was an absolute blank slate, without even a single memorable detail. There was a part of her that wanted to question it, wanted to understand this contradiction.

It was hastily overruled by the fact that the sun was hanging right over her head.

?Gah, noon already?! That means I?m really, really late!?

Discarding the thought for now, Sango rushed back to shore to start on her inspections again. At this rate she?d just have to settle for one sweep today, and make up for it with a more thorough search tomorrow.

What could she have forgotten, after all, that was more important than her work?

[Esifex]

....Ouch.

There are reasons I'm rather sympathetic to this last bit here, and you've made it ring just right.

[FinnKaenbyou]

Posting this because I feel bad not writing anything else today and there are probably still about 2 people who actually care about this story! :V

-----

Running on automatic, Sango found the days passing by with startling speed. A trip out to sea to Tori-Shima, a trip back to the mainland, each time inspecting the islands between the two, and a quick nap in the seas to recuperate. Like ordinary dolphins, the Delphi didn?t truly sleep in this form - one half of the brain could rest at a time, while the other governed basic functions so that they would come up for air every so often. It ran most Delphi ragged, which was why a day of rest in human form was mandatory during these long-distant posts.

The sun hadn?t even set by the time Sango had finished her inspections on the sixth day. She?d had the occasional piece of waste or scrap to clean up in the meantime, but besides that the job had been uneventful. The volcanoes had been fine, but that was enough to concern her - these things could fire almost without warning. Hell, it was possible they could go off while she was away, and she?d return to find the skies laced in red and deathly grey. She bit her lip looking back out from the coast of Hokkaido, wondering if there?d still be an archipelago to return to in two days? time.

There would maybe be a few things floating around when she came back. A few bottles, discarded pieces of paper, the usual. Nothing that would swamp her with backlog, for sure. She couldn?t expect the island residents to clean it up - they were probably too busy with their own lives to care about ?small? debris like that well out to sea. She wished for a while they?d have the sense to look at things from her point of view rather than staying in their own little worlds. If she ever talked to one of these people, she?d give them a good stern lecture, that was for sure.

...Hm.

As she was about to begin the journey home, a sudden uncertainty slipped into Sango?s mind. Something about this entire scenario felt a little off to her, in retrospect. Something seemed missing, forgotten, like a part of her had been asleep for the last six days. It was as if a thought lingered just out of reach in her head, always fluttering just in front of her but never clear enough to be visible or memorable. She pondered for a moment, trying to call out whatever it was that had been so firmly locked away in her head.

A few moments later, she gave up on the endeavour, having done nothing but give herself a headache through overexertion.

?Phwee.?

It couldn?t have been anything important, she decided. Something memorable would have stuck in her head, especially given how little there was to do around here. Discarding it as a petty point, she took only a single deep breath before plunging into the water, starting the trip back to base. She didn?t have the same spring in her step as she?d had on the way here - the need to swim so far out to sea and back every day had taken a lot of energy from her, and the lack of a good night?s sleep had done nothing to help.

Still, as she swam through the darkest regions of the sea on her way back to the academy, she could feel something nagging at her. It was a feeling she?d never quite experienced before, that she couldn?t put a finger on, but the best comparison she could find would be a feeling of emptiness. Something was missing, and it was just clear enough for Sango to be aware of it but not enough for her to actually remember. It was a slight annoyance that she got to toil with all the way back to the academy, and all things considered she was in a less than happy mood by the time she returned home.

After an age spent wrestling with her own memory, unable to pull out the tidbit that had frustrated her, Sango eventually let the matter pass as the academy finally came into sight. Again she no longer had to sneak her way in, swimming leisurely up to the front gate and entering the airlock from the other side. One of the guards, looking through a viewhole on his side, noticed her and set the system up to drain the room. A few seconds, one transformation and a deafeningly loud draining noise later, Sango was back on (relatively) dry land.

?Welcome back, Initiate. Do you have any pressing news to report??

The guard definitely didn?t sound enthusiastic as he spoke to Sango. This was pretty much the short straw in terms of Initiate duty, and he?d lost out considerably. He probably had to ask this question of every single person to pass through the gate, and Sango imagined it god old pretty fast.

?Nothing, sir. Tell the Sensei that the Izu islands are under control.?

He nodded, half asleep at his post. Sango couldn?t imagine working at a place like that - the islands were bad enough, but at least she got to move around a little as she worked. She gave him a nod of condolence as she made her way back to her own quarters.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and the rickety old dump she?d been living in a week before was more comforting now than she?d ever found it. Sango immediately fell to the bed, the week?s exhaustion showing at last. She was awake for no more than a few seconds before passing into a quiet slumber, leaving her report and other technicalities for tomorrow.

She dreamed strangely that night. An odd feeling of being petted, and racing through the seas at absurd speeds. A feeling that would have made her cheerful enough normally, but now seemed to leave a strange void inside her somewhere. Something was missing, something important, but she couldn?t quite put a finger on it.  The dream felt strangely nostalgic, but reeked of an absence somewhere. She flew through the oceans, looking around for whatever it was that she had forgotten.

Then she woke up in a shock, her memories of the dream dissipating instantly and her thoughts back in their rightful places. And that one thought, the one that always seemed just out of reach, as securely tucked away as ever.

-----

She?d never imagined she?d be doing this.

At some level, it went against everything she held honourable and respectable. It was a degree to which she had sworn she would never fall, a stain she was not willing to let blot her conscience and her character. But for her plan to go as she had prepared it, she had to pass on the message first, and she could not wait and hope for him to visit her. This was a necessary evil, and she reminded herself of that every chance she got as she made her way through the academy?s halls. Every step brought a new level of magnitude to the aching in her head. That was her first sign that she was going the right direction - her headaches seemed to grow more painful in direct proportion to how far away she was from him.

That was why Oi had sworn never to visit Jack?s office under any circumstances. She would find some excuse to be elsewhere, or dump the message onto whatever cadet or initiate happened to be passing by. Now, though, she had no choice but to do the deed herself, regardless of the damage the trip would likely do to her sanity.

The man seemed to have been designed and placed on her doorstep as a test from an unseen god, produced with the sole intent of trying her patience. He disregarded the honour and respect that she had worked so hard to make part of the Del-Sancti creed at this branch. He turned severe, important lessons into jokefests, preferring instead to pass on his foolish anecdotes. The students enjoyed his tales, true, but that did nothing to convince her of their effectiveness.

On top of that, the man?s behaviour outside the classroom was as detestable as his lecturing was. He treated every day as a holiday, and when Oi sent over the official files for him to fill in (or to be more accurate, when she handed the pile to an absent-minded cadet to deliver it for her) they were unlikely to return for the next three weeks. When they did arrive, they?d be written in a nigh-illegible hand as if Jack had signed the forms with his eyes closed, and Oi would have to translate his writing to a form that the Council would be able to actually read. She?d grown uncomfortably familiar with his lettering, and she would give anything to forget it as soon as possible.

She had devised a plan, then. One that would put all of her problems neatly into a single basket, which she could then leave to float away into the distance. Perhaps she was slightly sidestepping the rulings of the Del-Sancti in doing so, but necessity knew no law. She continued onward down the hallway to Jack?s office, ignoring the throbbing in her skull. She was already envisioning the conversation with him, and it was not a pleasant thought.

If it were possible to be allergic to unsorted, randomly thrown about messes, Jack?s room would probably have killed the Dean. Files and paper slips lay forgotten in distant corners of the room, dated for several months prior. Everything else was piled up within two trays on his desk, labeled ?File Now? and ?File Later? respectively. The former pile was a good deal taller than the latter.

As for the room itself, it was a good deal smaller that Oi?s own, but Jack put the space to much better use. This was to say that Oi struggled to make it more than three steps in without tripping over something, with his various tidbits and accessories left strewn on the floor like traps. She didn?t recognise half of these things, but from what she could tell they covered a diverse range almost across the entire planet: that hat was from Mexico, that blade of French origin, that statue infamous in the Middle East. She could have asked him where or how he?d managed to get his hands on these things, but the last thing she wanted to do now was care about his personal life.

Also of note in the room were the trophies. Not the sort made of metal to tell you how good you were, but the sort where you killed a creature and put its head on the wall to boast to anyone who entered. Oi, of course, found the whole procedure thoroughly tacky, but though she?d never admit it she shuddered slightly when the great white on the centre of the wall caught her attention. Perhaps the most disturbing part was that its eyes were as dull and jet-black as ever, so even as nothing but a head in the wall it looked as if the creature was still alive and glaring her down.

?Oh, greetin?s, boss. Didn?t know you came round these parts.?

Jack was lounging backwards in his chair, his feet planted firmly on his desk. He?d tipped his hat forward, covering his eyes from view but still displaying that cursed grin of his. Oi muttered. He was catching onto her, but there was no way his tricks would get him out of this scheme.

?Ah, forgive me. I should attend more often. It appears you need someone to clean up after you.?

?Clean up? I know where everythin? is, ?n? that?s all that matters!?

Jack kicked away from the desk, having insisted on getting one of the swivel-chairs human office workers seemed to adore. He allowed his furniture to perform a full 360-degree spin before stepping off, bowing towards his superior in the Western fashion, as if trying to infuriate his employer. As usual, it was working.

?Everyone?s best friend Jack here, ready to do your biddin?. Say the word, boss.?

Oi was paying no attention to the man?s rambling. She was focusing too intently on him personally to care about whatever drivel was coming out his mouth now. She noted the slightly bent-forward back, the tiny cricking sound when he shifted his neck, the sharp intake of breath as he stood up straight after the bow. She had come to this post relatively young, only now approaching her late thirties, but Jack had seen far more time than that. Delphi usually lived for about 150 years, and it looked like Jack must have been in his last few decades, probably at least three times Oi?s age. Despite his best efforts to hide it, time was clearly catching up with him.

She allowed herself a secret smirk at that. Still, she had better, and she was about to dish out the real damage.

?Jack-kun, I was looking to ask you a favour.?

Jack looked up, and now Oi could see his eye rising up in confusion. Whatever schemes he had been planning behind her back, this hadn?t been part of them. She wished she could take a photo of that moment and keep it on her person wherever she went.

?Uh, well. Sure. You got a class I need to cover? More forms to take care of??

He had been caught on the back foot, but a few seconds were more than enough to get him back his cool. The nerves in his eyes had faded, and he was back to the snarky old man Oi knew and hated. It was a relief to see him like that, actually. It meant the next few sentences would hit him even harder. Oi put on her best smile, wincing as she did so.

?No, Jack-kun. It is something much larger than that. You recall that I am leaving tomorrow for the Council?s annual forum, correct??

Jack nodded slowly. He didn?t seem to be coming to the same dramatic conclusions he was typically so proud of, and indeed it felt like Oi was guiding the old man along with every word. If only every conversation she had with him could be like this.

?Well, in most situations I would trust the running of the branch to one of the Sages during my absence. However, I understand that our branch?s Sages are all busy with their own affairs, whereas you have a good deal of free time in which to be the acting Dean, correct??

Jack?s eyes widened at that. Now the trap became blatantly clear, and this time there wasn?t anything his wit or cunning could offer as a counter. Oi continued to speak, rubbing the point in with every word.

?Oh, do not think this was my decision alone, Jack-kun. I understand you are a very popular man with our student body, so perhaps you can hit a nerve which I have failed to strike. I am certain you will be able to handle the additional paperwork, correct??

The tone of her voice was disgustingly maternal. It was clear, though, that Jack was in no position to refuse the offer; the Dean had ordered him to stand in for her, and given that he didn?t have a fully constructed veto from the Council he had to accept the post. No doubt she either wanted him to fail and earn himself a quick demotion, or simply lose what little hair remained under his hat from stress.

Jack did everything he could to pull a brave face as he came to terms with his defeat. She had outsmarted him here, plain and simple, and had the grace to offer her a tip of the hat in unspoken congratulations.

?Figure this old man?s still got enough wits left in him to run this place, eh? Well, don?t blame me if the whole thing?s a smoulderin? mess by the time you get back.?

Considering the fact the base was underwater, she had to admit that would be quite an achievement on his part. The instant he?d given his acceptance in words, Oi clicked her fingers, and a cadet stumbled into the room carrying a wall of papers at least two thirds his height. Understandably, given the state of the floor and his inability to see what was in front of him, the student predictably fell prey to Jack?s minefield of miscellany and found himself tumbling, his forms and files floating to the floor in beautiful arcs. Beautiful for Oi, at least, because she wouldn?t be the one picking them up.

?Anyway, I am afraid I will have to run. I have last minute preparations to take care of - this will be quite the trip after all. I wish you the best of luck, Jack-kun.?

She couldn?t hide the satisfaction in her voice as she made her way out of the room, leaving Jack and the still puzzled cadet to take care of the new mess. Now that Oi had left, Jack allowed his proud smile to droop slightly, but once again he had dropped his hat downward so the boy alongside him didn?t see it. This was quite the mess, and he wasn?t keen on cleaning it up himself.

?Hey, kid.?

The cadet looked up at him puzzled as he offered an address. These kids were easy to win over, he had learned. Strolling over leisurely to his desk, he opened a drawer and began to rummage through the sea of random accessories he?d thrown in there over the years. At last, he found the target of his excavation, pulling out a circular strip of tickets.

Meal tickets, to be precise. No-one kept a proper count of the things, and Jack had managed to sneak away a set without much trouble. As the saying went, the quickest way to a man?s heart was through his stomach.

?Half a dozen tickets if you give an old man help with this mess? And no talking, obviously, otherwise all your friends will be here helping me out.?

[Esifex]

You are now reading all of Jack's dialogue as spoken by the actor for Hagrid in the Harry Potter movies.

[Thaws]

Posting this because I feel bad not writing anything else today and there are probably still about 2 people who actually care about this story! :V

Posting to let you know I've been following this and your other stories and I love all your stories. :O

[Sect]

Jack's concerns about nine students passing when they shouldn't have have a deeper significance when you take into account Sango's actions in this part and the previous. Oh, I can understand panic and all that, but the point still stands.

[Esifex]

Jack's concerns about nine students passing when they shouldn't have have a deeper significance when you take into account Sango's actions in this part and the previous. Oh, I can understand panic and all that, but the point still stands.

And now that Oi just handed him the reins of the academy, you wonder if that's gonna blow up in her face.

[Sect]

And now that Oi just handed him the reins of the academy, you wonder if that's gonna blow up in her face.

I'm wondering if it's going to blow up in her face for the better, honestly. However, Jack doesn't strike me as the type who's able to walk his talk: always offering criticism, but never really any solutions. It does make me wonder why he went through so much trouble to land a teaching position, though, since it doesn't seem like he's really getting anything out of it if he has malicious intentions.

[Esifex]

if he has malicious intentions.

Well, I wasn't implying that Jack was gonna be malicious about it. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, y'know. A compulsion to 'do the right thing' could end up biting Oi in the ass, especially if Jack is every bit as badass as he seems to be. I mean, hell, when you've got the voice of Hagrid on your side, you pretty much have to be badass