Marionette

Cosmos, Chapter Fifty Eight - Ikidzumari [行き詰まり]

By now, the students of Class 3-E should really be used to the unexpected happening. They really shouldn't have been caught off guard by much anymore.

But they weren't.

The sudden crack of what sounded like thunder was soon discovered to be the sound of an explosion erupting from beneath the satellite campus building, a small handful of meters away if anyone had to take a guess. The reverberations from the explosion rocked the classroom, shaking cobwebs and dust loose from the ceilings, and startling the students out of their wits.

And unfortunately for poor Amaya, she was caught by surprise mid-banter with Maehara. The deafening sizzle and crackle of the ensuing sound startled her so much that she had jumped half a meter in the air and almost took a tumble over Okuda's tiny form situated just behind her.

It was thanks to a quick-thinking redhead standing nearby that she'd been caught by the shoulder of her jumper before the two girls wound up crashing to the hard wood floor.

'What in damn hell was that?!' Amaya practically yelped out through the onslaught of similar questions shouted out by classmates.

There was no response, though the onslaught of like-minded exclamations from others in the room was sign enough that the sentiment was mutual.

It was almost like a pitiful sense of deja vu as the Class Reps swiftly moved to look out the windows, as if Asano Gakuhou had gone back on his word and decided to destroy the building again.

However, the alarm that had grasped both Kataoka and Isogai was even more severe than when the excavators had arrived. Far more disbelieving and panicked.

Far less controlled, as it were.

There was no Kayano in the room, Amaya noted as everyone began to leave quickly to investigate the nearby sounds of an explosion, no Nagisa either, and of course Koro-sensei was absent; that was why they were discussing assassination plans just moments before. She barely even noticed when a hand had latched around her own and proceeded to drag her along after everyone else.

There was no petite duo anywhere, and in their place was a suffocating edge of foreboding bearing down on Amaya's mind like smog.

As far as Amaya knew, there hadn't been legitimate movement from any assassin in quite a while.

Nothing since the apparent incident where Nagisa's mother had tried to burn the classroom down. There had been no sightings at all ever since the Culture Festival over a week ago.

The harsh lashing of late-fall air against Amaya's exposed skin snapped her attention away from the spiraling thoughts when she'd been lead outside, and along with it came a horrifyingly strong odor of sulphur, even on the lively breeze. It had her coughing, struggling to take in clean air that didn't threaten to nauseate her.

As they turned around the corner towards the side nearby the storage shed, Amaya caught sight of Koro-sensei's alarmingly battered form hunched over nearby a hole in the ground through gaps in the students all running ahead of her.

And atop the storage shed was none other than a petite greenette who had been absent ever since the start of lunch break.

Kayano Kaede, hair loose and clothes unkempt, with the chilling sight of tentacles of her own waving through the air like live snakes.

Alarm bells starting screaming in Amaya's head at the sight of those tentacles, deafening her to the words around her as the ramifications that lone trait sunk in on her.

It answered exactly why she had suddenly been targeted by the greenette the exact moment after Asano Gakuhou threatened her.

And not only that, it answered exactly why Shiro's presence tailing the class had been absent for so long, most had forgotten about him.