Cover High/Pekora

Chapter 1: Quit Pranking Me, You Goddamn Rabbit!

A light gust brushes past as you make your way along the road. Leaves rustling in the wind, the Yoshino trees lining the path almost look like they're dancing. It would have been quite the beautiful sight a month ago during the flowering time, but now it's just a sea of plain green. Unremarkable in every way. Just like this day. The same stream of students making the same trip up the same hill to the same school. The sense of novelty you felt when you first transferred in at the start of the school year had worn off sooner than you'd hoped. Now it feels like you're just going through the motions. As you follow the current through the front gate and around the smoldering crater where the founder's statue used to be, you lift your head to regard the school building looming up ahead. The rocket from last week is still lodged in the third floor. Smoke is billowing out of the chemistry lab windows. And a dragon is napping on the roof.

Just another day at Cover High.

Like always, your first stop is the shoe cubbies just past the front doors. But as you start to reach into the cubby for your indoor shoes, your better judgment commands you to stop. In your morning stupor, you'd almost forgotten to be vigilant of one of the only things that manages to shake up your daily routine. Your cubby is one of that girl's primary targets. Who knows what sort of misfortune could have befallen you, had you carelessly reached inside?

Slipping off one of your shoes, you tentatively rap the heel against the walls of the cubby. When that fails to elicit any sort of response, your next move is to lightly nudge the shoes within, pushing them into the corner. Still nothing. You're not satisfied yet, but at least you can be content that the cubby itself isn't rigged. It feels safe enough to pick up your indoor shoes now for closer inspection. You turn them over and give them a shake. No ball bearings inside. Good. You brush a finger against the inner soles. No superglue. Also good. The more checks you perform, the more certain you become that these shoes are, in fact, safe to put on your feet.

And that just makes you even more on edge. Your improving ability to predict your foe's more basic traps has only caused her to come up with japes of increasing complexity in response. Things are never as simple as ball bearings in your shoes anymore. Mind-games have become the new meta, with multiple layers of misdirection and false security. Your shoe cubby may be safe today, but that could easily be a ploy to get you to let your guard down and assume that this will be a trap-less day. You can't let yourself relax just yet.

With your indoor shoes now safely encasing your feet, you step out into the hallway and head for the next hot-spot: your locker. Most schools around here don't give students individual lockers, but this place is an exception. You almost wish it wasn't, with how easy it is to rig them with god-knows-what. By the time you've made your way through the crowd of students, been stopped by an Oozora Police cordon, doubled back, taken the long way around via the second floor, and finally arrived at your locker, your mind is filled with potential trap locations.

A cursory glance at the exterior immediately turns up a hit: someone set up a pressure plate on the ground in front of your locker. It's the same color as the tile floor, so one wouldn't notice it if they weren't paying attention. A month ago, something like this might have actually gotten past you. But to your present-day perception skills, it sticks out like a sore thumb. You slip your bag off of your shoulder and dump it on the plate. And sure enough, out of the ceiling drops a blackboard eraser that lands squarely atop the bag in a white puff of powdered chalk.

Dispersing the cloud of dust with a wave of your hand, you pick up the eraser and toss it away. Where did she even get that thing? This school doesn't use blackboards. And setting that aside, this setup was way too obvious. She had to have anticipated you noticing it. Which must mean that there's something else: a trap within a trap, meant to trigger once you'd been lulled into a false sense of security. Well you're not falling for it!