Marionette

Cosmos, Chapter Thirty One - Shura [修羅]

Following the painfully short cut Irina Jelavic gave her the morning before, Amaya was beyond exasperated. She'd spent a long time trying to get her hair to at least sit somewhat neat the very next morning, however, like the infuriating redhead snickering away behind her back, her hair did not heed her worsening mood. It only sought to frizz up worse and worse the more she tried to rectify it, bringing her to grudgingly accept its presence.

Reiko had positively squealed at the sight of Amaya's short and puffy hair when she'd gotten home, and her gushing still hadn't waned by then – She had practically taken every possible opportunity to try and fluff Amaya's hair up even more, exclaiming that she was like a Persian cat, much to an already amused redhead's further entertainment.

All Amaya wanted to do was hide out at home and sulk for however long it would take for her hair to grow back, but they had Boutaoshi to prepare for. So Amaya swallowed her pride and left for class with the still-amused evil incarnate.

He didn't speak a word about the mess that the girls had made of her, undoubtedly he watched at least a bit of her torture to know what had happened. Yet that didn't stop him from practically smirking at her the whole way up the mountain.

And of course, she noticed. His very presence screamed amusement at her expense.

Unfortunately, that wasn't all there was to prod at her already prominent agitation.

Curious looks were received from some as they reached the classroom, horrified gasps from a couple of the girls responsible for Amaya's torment yesterday, and most prominently, a strange sort of squeal similar to that of Reiko's the afternoon before escaped none other than Fuwa.

In fact, the manga-fanatic was about to launch into some kind of rant, though the visibly agitated look across Amaya's face had her decide better on that. Instead, she poured through her copy of JUMP almost obsessively for the duration of first period.

There was no sign of Terasaka's posse at all, even Itona was gone.

Though by the start of intermission between first and second period, they turned up with varying looks of success written across their faces, and Itona had a remote control car and speaker in his hands as he wandered in after Terasaka.

'Ah, Itona-kun, did you have any luck?' Koro-sensei spoke up at their return, drawing the attention of the bulk of the class.

'Yeah.' Was the blunt and simple response Itona gave as he walked straight to his desk.

'Well then! Shall we have a listen?' The Octopus asked cheerfully enough, earning a curt nod in response.

A few of their classmates cast each other curious looks as the latest member set up the remote-control vehicle and hooked the speaker up with it, picking themselves up one by one to follow suit as Koro-sensei approached Itona's desk. Amaya sunk lower in her seat as she settled in for whatever the hell was going on, ignoring the fact that Karma had ended up basically standing over her shoulder instead of actually sitting in his damn chair.

Within less than a minute, the whole corner of the room was surrounded as Itona set everything up, and with the smallest glance at everyone, he flipped the switch of his plug-in speaker.

The sounds of battery-operated gears and clunking sounds of the remote control vehicle echoed faintly through the speaker, overshadowing the sounds of speech in the background, the odd remark of "Brazil", "France", among other words of no distinguishable purpose.

At least until a few seconds later, when the vehicle had likely gotten into position.

[...tter from the End Class?] Echoed from the speaker with remarkable clarity, causing Amaya to let out a small breath.