Shoji Gatoh: Fighting Boy Meets Girl

"Young man!"

"Yes ma'am."

"I don't know what school you came from; but around here, we confiscate toys like these."

"Excuse me?"

"Please wait in the staff room. It's almost time for class!"

All the onlookers laughed and moved on their way.

"Gross—he's a military nut," opined Kaname. "That gives me geek chills."

"He looks like he might be interesting," declared Kyouko smartly.

Poor Sousuke Sagara. Though he was at home on any battlefield and had been raised in international conflict zones, on a high school campus, he was a clueless moron.

Perhaps the security is tighter here than I had guessed, thought Sousuke as he and Miss Kagurazaka walked through an empty corridor.

At first, when she asked to search his bag, Sousuke thought he might have failed the mission already. After his weapons were confiscated, he resigned himself to following the teacher to the basement, where he assumed they would interrogate and beat him.

But then, as all the students submitted to the search, he realized that it was routine.

Wait a minute. Does that mean that a lot of students bring small arms and explosives to class?

Sousuke quickly looked around, but he didn't see anything to support or negate the idea.

If all the students were armed, it would make the bodyguard mission a bit more complicated. That meant it was conceivable that anyone, even the volleyball team walking down the hall, could be carrying submachine guns.

Sousuke was not overly concerned, however, because Kurz Weber was in an M9 Gernsback, camouflaged in a grove of trees behind the school. If Sousuke called him on his miniature wristwatch radio, the M9 could be there in about ten seconds.

"Urzu Six, what's your status?" whispered Sousuke into his watch.

"Tired and hungry," Kurz replied into Sousuke's hidden earpiece. "Need beer."

Miss Kagurazaka continued to lead Sousuke briskly down the hallway. She was a proper-looking woman in her mid-twenties. She wore a short bob haircut and a tight-skirted gray suit.

"Ma'am," began Sousuke, "about that gun…"

"It will be returned to you at the end of the school term," she interrupted.

"That's not the issue. The problem is that there's already a round in the chamber. It's extremely dangerous, so please don't touch the trigger under any circumstances."

"Huh? Oh, okay."

"It's loaded with splat rounds that have an extremely high kill rate. So, even an accidental firing will cause fatalities. Handle it with caution, please."

"I understand. Don't worry."

She clearly did not understand. Against her instructions, Sousuke worried.

From their desks in the clamorous classroom, Kaname and Kyouko watched Miss Kagurazaka lead Sousuke Sagara into the room. Kaname and Kyouko conducted a brief, wordless conversation through facial expressions and gestures.

Look, there he is!

The gun nut!

"Quiet down, everyone!" shouted the teacher, rapping the attendance book against the blackboard. "Take your seats and pipe down. It's time to meet your new classmate."

Obediently, the majority of the students quieted.

"Okay. Mister Sagara, please introduce yourself."

"Yes, ma'am." Sousuke took a step forward. "My name is Sergeant Sousuke Sagara," he boomed.

Almost immediately, he paled at his own idiocy.

"Surgeon So Gay Soggy Log?" called one of the jokers from the back of the room.

"Sir John Soaks a Saw Gulag?"

"Sergeant? Like an army sergeant?"

"Quiet everyone! Give the new student a chance to speak," the teacher ordered sternly, again tapping against the blackboard with her book to quiet the class down. "As for you, Mister Sagara, this is no time for jokes."

"I apologize."

Previously, Sousuke never had felt so nervous on a mission. The pressure was intense. Letting that one word slip could cause the failure of the entire mission.

Sweating profusely, he snapped to attention and started over. "I am Sousuke Sagara. Ignore the 'sergeant.' That is all."

"That's it?"

"Yes, ma'am. That is all."

Miss Kagurazaka turned to the class. "Any questions?"

"Where are you from, Sagara?"

"I have lived many places—Afghanistan, Lebanon, Cambodia, Iraq—but I haven't stayed in any one place for very long."

The class fell silent.

"Wow. Sounds like Mister Sagara moved around quite a bit," concluded Miss Kagurazaka. "If I'm not mistaken, you transferred here from America, right?"

"That's correct," said Sousuke, acknowledging his fake transfer papers, which showed a previous address in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Although Sousuke never actually had been there, he knew some people who had.

One of the students raised his hand, but he didn't wait for the teacher to call on him. "Got any hobbies?"

"Model guns!" offered someone from the back of the room, and the class erupted in laughter.

"I enjoy fishing and reading," Sousuke said truthfully. Whenever Sousuke had time to spare at Mithril's West Pacific base, he dropped a line in the water and picked up a good weapons manual. Even when it rained, he sat out there under an umbrella, immersed in his own little world.

"What do you read?" inquired one of the students.

Sousuke's eyes lit up. "Primarily technical writings and specialized magazines, such as Jane's Fighting Ships, Soldier of Fortune, and Arm Slave Monthly. I also have read the Japanese AS Fan, which contains surprisingly high-level information. Lately, I've been completely captivated by a series from the Naval Institute Press…"

Sousuke realized he had lost a hundred percent of his audience already. He hung his head. "Never mind. Please, forget that."

No need to ask: No one remembered, because no one was listening. One of the girls near the front raised her hand.

"Um, who are your favorite musicians?"

This could be difficult—Sousuke rarely listened to music. He grunted as he recalled the CDs Master Sergeant Mao had given him before he left on his mission.

"Oh, yes—Hiroshi Itsuki and SMAP."

"What a weirdo," exclaimed Kaname as she undid the ribbon on the chest of her uniform. "I mean, nothing he says makes any sense at all. I don't think he's trying to be funny, either—I think he's legitimately messed up in the head, a psycho."

As Kaname removed her blouse and put it on a hanger, she knocked over the baseball bat that had been leaning against her locker.

"Darn it! I mean, did you see him during class? He just kept looking around. And in between classes, he paced around in the hallway. So weird."

"Really?" asked Kyouko, who was in the process of removing her skirt. "I didn't notice."

"So weird. Seriously, it annoys me just to look at him."

"Then don't look at him."

"I-I wasn't," protested Kaname as she readjusted her bra. "Why would I look at a maniac like that? But this is the worst—the worst! A couple of times, I caught him looking at me. He played it like it was an accident and just looked away, but it was creepy. Creepy!"

"A lot of guys look at you, Kana. You're really pretty, you know," commented Kyouko with a tinge of envy. She pulled up her socks and reached for her orange softball pants.