The League of Espionage Photojournalists

Five

Well, I ran out of coffee. Whoops. My host of loyal reader(s) -- more commonly known as myself -- must be furious at my unannounced 13-day hiatus. Sadly, as my host of loyal reader(s) is also the writer, they'll have to deal. Daily updates resume today.

"We're losing him!" Haruto yells urgently. Takeshi yelps and trips over a chair, nearly faceplanting in the middle of the floor. Even Sakura, usually unaffected by Haruto's displays of urgency, is working as fast as she can, sweat dripping from her brow, slamming pages through the stapler. Takeshi staggers over to her, bleeding from a scrape on his cheek, and she snatches the next segment of the magazine copy from him, not missing a beat to begin stapling it together. Aika no longer needs to embellish the drama of the scene, still taking minutes with one hand while loudly narrating the progress of the publishing admin's exit from their office.
"Yep, he's finished putting away the papers, and... ooh! He's getting the keeeeeys, we're not gonna maaaake it!"
I'm not exactly sure how she got her hands on the live surveillance feed of the school's hallways, but our one monitor now displays an angle of the hallway outside Mr. Tsukahama's office, where, through the windows, we can see him packing up for the day, about to leave.
"Faster! Faster! We will make it, even if it kills me!" Haruto yells, shaking a determined fist while vaulting over a table. If he had any interest in sports, any of the athletic clubs would love to have him -- he's practically a walking sports anime already. The atmosphere of the room is not unlike what I'd imagine an MI6 command room looks like in the middle of a full-scale invasion. The ground is littered with pages hastily marked in colored ink, pens, erasers, and various computer accessories joining them as sprinting club members knock them from the tables in their hurry. It may have been slightly ambitious to string all of our hopes for this week on getting my photographic proof, and then committing to writing the entire issue in the 90 minutes from the end of school to when Mr. Tsukahama, responsible for sharing our final copy with the printers every Friday, locks up and leaves. But we're crazy enough, or possibly bad enough at judging how long something will take, to commit everything we have to it.
Even I am put to work, printing file after file after file to the old, rattling printer in the corner, ink nozzle wheezing like an ancient creature gripping disinterestedly to the last threads of life. Every so often, the wheels will catch, and the printer will choke and rattle constipatedly, until I whack it with a fist or shake it to get it moving again.
"Last one!" I yell, ripping the final page out of the printer right as it finishes. Takeshi grabs the last pages from me, and spins sharply around, stumbling so fast that he overbalances, careening out of control towards Sakura. She yells and jumps out of the way, taking the stapled manuscript with her. Takeshi just manages to throw the pages to the desk, before he really does faceplant, crashing to the floor then lying still, apparently unwilling to get back up.
"Yes, Takeshi! Take a rest, you've done it!" Haruto yells. Takeshi groans weakly in response.
"Finishing it!!" Sakura yells. She grabs the last page, and giving a final slam of a stapler, holds it high in the air.
"Done!!"

Haruto leaps over to her. "Yes! Yes! We have it now!"
"He's going out the dooooor! You're gonna miiiiss him!" Aika calls in singsong behind us.
"What?!" Sakura yells. Much as she tries to hide it, she does eventually get into these things.
"Not a second to lose! Let's GO!" Haruto slams the door to the club closet open, grabs the manuscript from Sakura, and dashes out into the halls.
"C'mon!" Sakura yells, and takes off after him. A second later, I'm off too, dashing out into the light and after the slapping of feet against the tiled floor.
"You're not gonna maaaaake it!" Aika calls behind us again, still typing the minutes. Takeshi groans weakly, face still on the ground.

"Where are we going?!" Sakura yells after Haruto, "Mr. Tsukahama's office is the other way!"
"There's no time for that!" Haruto yells, dashing for the stairs. "He's already departed from there! We must catch him before he leaves the school!"
"And how do you plan to do that?!" Sakura yells in response. I run through the route in my head. The school's doors face North, and Mr. Tsukahama's office is further South than our club room, and two floors below. He has one flight of stairs down to the ground floor, and we need the same stairs, but we have three floors to go...