[attr=class,absolute-holder]

[attr=class,bulk]
Kaida merely watched Zipper faint with a placid face. She guessed she was right about Zipper seeming sick.[break][break]

"Seems like you'll have to wait until she wakes up for that..." Kaida told Jun with a sigh. She glanced around at the unsuspecting faces of the barbeque before bending down and picking Zipper's unconscious form up, lobbing the junior over her shoulder. "I'll take her to the infirmary. Parties aren't really my speed, anyway." Kaida left, leaving Jun to fend for herself. "Good luck."

[attr=class,bottom-text]

junsuina Zipper

notes

[attr=class,absolute-holder]

[attr=class,bulk]
Killed?[break][break]

No, no, that couldn't happen. Killed before she could ever take down her clan, make them pay for the life she had suffered and the sins they had made so many others suffer beneath their blood-stained hands? Such a notion, such a thought was so... irrational and absurd that it made her head throb, making Kaida question why she had ever hesitated in the first place. To die to someone she had never heard of, just because of her blood— when it came to that, Daiki appeared to her just as everyone else had; as someone who would try and take advantage of her.[break][break]

And it made her so, so irrecoverably angry.[break][break]

"Okay." Kaida swallowed as Daiki grew near. "I trust you."[break][break]

Without a second breath, Kaida lunged for Kazashi as the apartment exploded.[break][break]

Clouds of frost flooded the area as shrapnel was flung to the air, a slithering hiss accompanying the cold sound of fog. Kaida's dragon emerged from the clutter, puffs of ice escaping her jowls as she scooped up Kazashi onto her shoulders. Kazashi had requested this— there was no going back now.[break][break]

As soon as Kaida's searching gaze landed on Daiki, her claws gripped what was left of the apartment she stood on, ice surging up her throat as she fired a beam directly at him. An action to dare him into doing something more than what he had been doing, to truly show them if he was really serious about such a dastardly notion as murder.

[attr=class,bottom-text]

Kazashi McCoy

notes

[attr=class,absolute-holder]

[attr=class,bulk]
Kaida snorted, hiding her amusement at Jun's befuddlement and bewilderment quite badly. When the girl — Zipper, it seemed like — turned her attention to the senior, Kaida matched her friend's confusion. [break][break]

She looked over Zipper carefully, taking one long, slow calculating look at the first year from shoe to eyes. Was she sick or something? Why was Zipper looking at Kaida like that? And what was she talking about? Was it some sort of foreign custom she wasn't familiar with yet? Well, there wasn't any need to question it. Kaida didn't understand, so she would just go along with it.[break][break]

The senior shook Zipper's hand, maintaining eye-contact, staring at her for an uncomfortably lengthy moment. Zipper would find Kaida's skin to be ice cold. "Kaida." She replied, testing her words languidly. "It's... very gay to meet you too, Zipper." With that over, she looked at Jun. "Need any help with that?"

[attr=class,bottom-text]

junsuina Zipper

notes

[attr=class,absolute-holder]

[attr=class,bulk]
Well, that was a plus. Watching someone eat their words would always make her scoff in amusement, but it doesn't bode well in her heart that these items seem to come with a downside— and it could happen to anyone in the competition, as innocent as they could be compared to the Paragon of Pretension back there.[break][break]

She doesn't see any point in hesitating— when it comes to these things, Kaida isn't in it to win it, but she'll still try and push arrogant assholes off their pedestal.[break][break]

With mountain rumbling and terrain trembling, Kaida resigned herself to the embarrassment of the onesie pajamas, promptly putting them on as fast as possible before continuing to leap up the mountain, praying to whatever god had overseen the misfortune of her life to give her one little good chance before activating its invisibility. With any hope, no one would notice her presence.

[attr=class,bottom-text]

Samaritan Kurokami Gen Jack Orion

notes

[attr=class,absolute-holder]

[attr=class,bulk]
The halls of the temple are still. Quiet. Hushed. Silent. The dilapidated walls occasionally groan under its rotting weight, pillars formerly painted in brilliant red now a sad shade of burgundy, the sun desperately trying to make its way through the crumbling cracks in the ceiling. Rats squeak as they move about in the rubble. Birds chirp in the distance, almost a beautiful sound.[break][break]

A complete contrast to the shadowed figure hunching by the altar of the main hall, who only ever knew turmoil in her heart.[break][break]

Shrrk. Shrrk. Shrrk.[break][break]

Sparks fly as the figure sharpened her weapon. A giant spear glistening like ice in winter, in the hands of the beast as she ran a whetstone over its blade, otherwise motionless— her stare forwards, unseeing, as a single eye glared at a spot on the wall. It is a day of many for Kaida, blending seamlessly into the next, almost as though she were in a timeloop. Sharpen, hunt, patrol. Sharpen, hunt, patrol. Sharpen, hunt, patrol. Any other activity was only a necessity when it stopped her from doing those three things. In some aspects, she had not changed much from her days in U.A.U three years ago.[break][break]

Shrrk. Shrrk. Shrrk.[break][break]

But Kaida wasn't there anymore. At least, not the Kaida she pretended to be.[break][break]

"What are you doing?"[break][break]

Shrrk. Shrrk. Shrrk.[break][break]

"There's no time to be loitering around, devil. You sit here while your sister's head should be in your hands?"[break][break]

Katsuro's voice was scathing as it echoed in her ear. Kaida did not move, or flinch. His body lingered. She knew if she moved, if she saw the blood running down his severed neck, she would flinch, and fly into one of her episodes.[break][break]

Her brother snarled. "You useless creature. Have we all died, suffered for nothing?"[break][break]

"No." Kaida grunted out, clutching her head in pain with a gloved hand. Be quiet, be still. He will leave eventually.[break][break]

"Don't you dare ignore me," Katsuro's hot phantom breath ruffled the fur on her cloak. "WE'RE STILL HERE BECAUSE OF YOU—"[break][break]

It's quiet again. Katsuro doesn't loiter at her back anymore. The birdsong resumed. Safe. Quiet.[break][break]

Kaida buried her other hand in her hair, strands of it caught on her armor. Those ethereal beings, the ones who remind her of her failures, she told herself that they were necessary in her life. She would not know what was important otherwise. Her sister's head. Kasumi's head, at her feet, with her body a bloodied, unrecognizable mess only a foot away. Then would they be silent. Then would she finally rest in peace, knowing the dead had been avenged. But it hadn't come yet. She needed to keep being reminded that by them. She's just lucky Kenzou wasn't there too this time.[break][break]

"My lady..." Another voice. It's not ethereal. Not phantom. It's real, this time, she thought. "Have you not slept again?"[break][break]

"What do you want, Sango?" Kaida snapped. "I am in the middle of something."[break][break]

"Staring at nothing, brooding again, you mean." Sango's voice grounded her. But it is still very, very irritating. Sango sighed. "I am worried for you."[break][break]

"I am fine." Kaida hissed. Sango lingered in her blind spot, opposite of where Katsuro had been. Kaida tugged her hands from her hair, strands violently ripped out. "Leave me be."[break][break]

"You are not." Sango countered. "You're talking to the wall again. You were doing that last night, too."[break][break]

Kaida said nothing, rubbing at the permanent circle beneath her eye. [break][break]

"Continue like this, and you'll crash and burn. What will you do then, Kaida? Leave dear little Koharu to follow you in your stead?"[break][break]

"BE QUIET!" Suddenly, Kaida reared up to her full height, whipping around to stare at the pink-haired kitsune-like woman who flinched backwards at the dragoness' volume, whetstone forgotten. "I do not need your scolding. I do not need your presence. You are nothing but a nuisance, an irritating fly who keeps getting in my way." Kaida bore down on her, stepping forward until Sango's back hit the wall, the warm amber in her eye now replaced by a cold, unforgiving blue. "Leave. Me. Alone."[break][break]

Whipping around and grabbing her spear, Kaida stormed out, cloak flowing behind her like Death's own black tatters. Sango breathed in and out, gathering herself, watching the ghost of a woman leave. Sango shook her head, a heartbroken scowl pulling at her lips.[break][break]

But it was just another day for the One-eyed Dragon, turned from Kaida the student, into a shell of what she had once been. Any lingering kindness flowed down the river of misfortunes the world had dared to befallen her, doomed to a melancholic memory of anyone who had once known her benign soul.

[attr=class,bottom-text]

@tag

notes

[attr=class,absolute-holder]

[attr=class,bulk]
Ah, that couldn't be right. Could it?[break][break]

No. A few blinks told Kaida what she was seeing was indeed real. She wondered if anyone else had such peculiar luck as her with their items. After all, who would want to see her in... that?[break][break]

She was still in such a flummoxed mood that the fourth year hardly noticed when the ground gave way, catching her footing with a loud, annoyed growl under her breath as she wielded the gun she was given, though saw no use for it at the time being. Kaida would merely send a scalding glare towards Gen before jumping forth across a bridging gap that groaned in her ears as the earth shifted, brushing dirt from her shoulders as she went. "Careful. You'll fall behind the rest of us with an ancient tool like that, Kurokami." Kaida hissed.

[attr=class,bottom-text]

Kurokami Gen Jack Orion Samaritan

notes