A Lady Never Tells Where She Hides Her Triforce Piece

Brain Bleach

The next day, on the way home from school, I looked around to see if I could figure out the direction of the bad neighborhood Ikaruga had told us about. We had to go hang out there, to find out if Hebijo had a third transfer student, so we could be prepared for if shit were to go down. I mean, I'd rather not have to basically sneak behind enemy lines and instigate things, but it was necessary. And if we were training to be shinobi... well, my life was eventually going to be about sneaking behind enemy lines and instigating things. So I was looking...

Unfortunately, all the streets and shops and plazas looked the same to me.

I waited until we got home and changed out of our school uniforms into casual street clothes. Because obviously we couldn't go into Hebijo students' territory in our Hanzo uniforms. But once that was done, I stood over Tris as she started to settle down on the couch with a book.

"Yeah?" she asked.

I gestured toward the door.

"What, do you gotta go somewhere?"

I stomped my foot and continued gesturing toward the door.

"I'm not getting you. Can you try to say a word?"

I took a few deep breaths, trying to calm myself. Then...

"Hebijo!"

"Oh, yeah... you wanted to do that today, now?"

I nodded.

"Do we have to?"

I nodded again.

"Isn't there another way? Can't we find out more about what's going on in other ways first? Or shouldn't we call Shiki and see if we can go shopping with her and that Zelda girl? Anything besides charging into enemy territory like idiots?"

I puffed out my cheeks at Tris and flapped my arms in a chicken gesture.

"I'm not afraid, I'm just being practical," she said. "There's a fine line between courage and stupidity."

I knew that, damn it. But I lived my entire life on that line, and I wasn't about to stop now.

Honestly, if I had enough sense of direction to find the neighborhood, I'd go by myself. I'd act all innocent and scared like I didn't realize I went into the wrong neighborhood at first, and that'd probably draw out the Hebijo students to come try to mug me or something. Then I could kick ass, and then use the defeated students as leverage to get the information we needed. Although, at some point I'd have to involve Tris. I couldn't exactly ask for the necessary info if I couldn't speak.

So Tris was going to have to come.

I tugged her arm until she got up, then started dragging her toward the door as she sighed.

"Fine," she said, taking the lead after awhile because she was the one with the actual sense of direction.

The neighborhood we ended up in looked just like all the other ones to me. Sure, there were more boarded up shops and broken windows and stuff, but... so far, it seemed classist to call it a bad area. But maybe that was the point in itself. That people were more likely to turn to criminal activity when they were already in a tough place and had nothing left to lose.

That still didn't explain why someone would willingly choose to go to an evil shinobi school, though. Not to me.

"Now what?" Tris whispered to me.

I shrugged, and looked around. There was a dilapidated playground nearby, surrounded by a fence, with a locked gate. I grabbed onto the fence and hoisted myself over it, landing neatly on the other side, before heading toward the playhouse and wedging myself inside it. I peered out the window, leaving Tris shaking her head. But she followed suit in hopping the fence, and then scurried to the top of the covered slide, entering it, and coming most of the way down, but not all the way. Just enough that she could peek out the slide's opening at the end.