"Greetings once again, my dear students of Ivoria! It is I, your Headmistress, Allicity Lachlan! I'd like to welcome you all to another year here at the Japan Branch of Ivoria Academy! This is our school's twentieth anniversary, as well as my twentieth year as Headmistress! When I was selected for this position at the ripe old age of 21 years old, I could barely hold in my excitement."
The P.A. loudspeaker blared out the woman's words throughout the entirety of the grounds. Many of the older students smiled, their hearts filled with the familiar warmth of their Headmistress's jovial ranting. Some of the younger students cringed, the sheer volume of the P.A. system overwhelming their senses. None missed the message being broadcasted.
"In the twenty proud years since our school's inception, we've produced more than twenty-two thousand professional Deihunters, most of whom graduated at B-Rank or higher! We don't hold anyone back here at this branch, if you're an A-Rank, you will be ranked and judged as such, and given missions according to your ability; we won't baby you, you will be challenged."
The P.A. cut out, then back on again as Allicity continued.
"It is my hope that all students here at Ivoria will do their utmost to improve their skills as Deihunters, so that we can make the lives of the average person safer in our war against the Dei, for if we don't, who will? Well... with that in mind, please do everything you can to be the best you that you can be."
The P.A. crackled, signalling the end of the broadcast.
On the rooftop of the academy's main building, sat just beneath one of the many loudspeakers that sat on each of the buildings was a teenage girl, wearing the purple dress shirt of a third year student, gently breathing in an apparent nap, obviously unperturbed by the blaring noise that had come and gone just a few meters above her head.
Her chestnut brown hair covered her face as her head bobbed up and down with the rhythm of her breathing, soft puffs of air shifting it ever so slightly.
The door to the rooftop access stairwell opened abruptly, slamming against the white brick wall of the building with a crash, and the breathing of the young woman hitched for the briefest moment.
The sound of high heels clacking against stone rounded the corner where the young woman was resting, before another woman, about 4 years older, stood before her, staring down at the sleeping girl.
This woman was dressed in the attire one might expect of a high level executive, her penny skirt and suit the same shade of black as her hair. A pair of amber eyes stared down at the girl sat before her.
She raised her leg, aiming her foot towards the head of the girl, then kicked out, the heel of her shoe smacking against the wall where the girl's head had been just a fraction of a second previously.
The girl was now standing right behind the woman, her arms stretched over her head as she popped her stiff joints, a yawn escaping from her open mouth.
"Y'know, Dahlia, for a woman who's never shown the slightest interest in getting married, you sure do wear some rather risque panties." Came the girl's surprisingly masculine voice.
"Oh shut up, Drake. What are you doing hiding up here, anyway?" The woman, Dahlia, asked.
The girl in front of her began to shift before her very eyes, her hair receding back into her scalp, her breasts shrinking until they were nonexistent, her hips straightening and her shoulders broadening as her rounded face became angular and handsome.
The now young man before her opened his eyes, revealing the same yellow irises that the woman watching him had.
"I wasn't hiding, per se, just didn't feel like dealing with the hubbub of the first day of the new year. I decided to come up here to get some peace and quiet. The disguise was to keep people from recognizing me on the way, here, hold this." He said, pulling a bra from underneath his uniform and handing it to Dahlia.
"Frankly, if I weren't your sister, this would be highly inappropriate." She said, taking the bra from him and folding it neatly in her hands.
"Frankly," Drake began, pulling a pair of panties from underneath his skirt and throwing them at her as well. "If you weren't my sister, you tracking me across the school and flashing your panties to me would be highly inappropriate." He finished.
With a snap of his fingers, a pair of boxers appeared in his hands, and he promptly slipped them on beneath his skirt, which he then pulled off. With another snap, the skirt disappeared, replaced with a pair of black dress pants.
"Why didn't you just send the bra away?" Dahlia asked, exasperatedly watching him struggle into his pants.
"Cuz it's not my bra, it's yours." He shrugged.
She opened the bra and gave it a closer look, and, sure enough, it was somewhat familiar to her.
"Why would you want to wear one of my bras?" She asked.
"Well, I figured you might go looking through my dorm room and check my wardrobe to see if any of *my* bras were missing. If they were, you're smart enough to understand that I'm hiding somewhere, transformed." He explained.
"So... you were hiding from me." She said, crooking an eyebrow as she smirked at him.
"Yeah, maybe a little bit. So... now that you found me, what did you want, anyway?" He asked.
"Two things, actually: First, I'm here to inform you of the disbandment of Trainee Deihunting Squad 699. Your teammates, Kayne, Kayla, and Kleio Haas have all decided to join a professional Deihunting program in Germany. They'll be leaving some time near the end of the month." Dahlia said.
Drake's face lit up with a bright smile as he nodded his head.
"So they finally decided to go through with it, eh? Good for them!" He laughed. "I'm guessing Arakawa is sticking around for her fifth and final year here at good ol' Ivoria?
"That is correct, Arakawa Yui is shifting from an active Instructor role to an advisory role. She'll be assigned a few new squads after the new first years have been assigned their instructors. That leads me to my second reason for looking for you: the Headmistress wishes to speak with you."
Drake looked mildly surprised at this, and walked toward the edge of the rooftop, looking out over the grounds of the campus. At four stories high, the main building was the largest amongst the 4 buildings, allowing him to stare down at the many students and teachers who were hurriedly moving about.
"Well... if Aunt Allicity wants to see me, I suppose I'd better head down to see her, eh? She's still on the fourth floor, right? I think I'll take a shortcut."
With that, he leapt from the roof, left hand outstretched. With a rumble, the earth below shot upward in the form of a slender pillar of dirt and grass, stopping his descent as it reached the window level of the fourth floor. He spun on the pillar, kicking out and shattering the window in front of him, before leaping into the hallway.
Dahlia sighed, looking over the edge at the window that had already begun to repair itself, then turned back toward the entrance to the stairwell.
When she had returned to the fourth floor, she found Drake standing outside of a closed door, surrounded by a mob of students, a rather displeased look on his face as he gazed at Dahlia.
"I forget, at times, that people always want to talk to me, even if I don't want to talk to them." He said loudly, waiting patiently for Dahlia to step between the loud crowd and in front of him, a keycard to the locked office door in her hand.
"Please return to your business, before I am forced to report you to the Headmistress." She said sternly.
The boisterous crowd dispersed almost at once, only a few thinking of trying their luck before deciding against it, considering the look in Dahlia's eyes.
With a wave of the keycard, the office door swung open, and the siblings quickly made their way inside. The office itself was decorated almost like a bedroom, with a litany of family photos adorning the walls, a pull-out sofa on one side of the room, and a small refrigerator in the corner near a large office desk.
Behind said desk sat a short, pink-haired young woman. At least, she appeared young, as Drake knew that despite her youthful looks, the Headmistress was well into her forties.
A smile appeared on the woman's cute face, and she slid out from behind the desk, moving over to Drake and wrapping her arms around his midriff in a warm hug.
"I haven't seen you since your fight with Balance. You should come and visit more often; your mom gets worried, even if she'd never say it." She said.
"It's nice to see you, too, Aunt Allicity." He said, hugging her in return. "Dolly said you wanted to see me."
Dahlia's face darkened at the use of her nickname, but she remained silent as the Headmistress began to speak.
"Well, since your teammates are all leaving to join a Deihunting program, you don't really belong to a team anymore. As you know, third years are required to take on certain responsibilities in order to remain at an Academy as a student, and, since I know you're not interested in joining a Deihunting program at this moment, I've taken the liberty of adding you to the candidate list for our newest potential third year instructors. This is technically supposed to be your interview before I'm allowed to hire you." She explained.
Drake gave an interested look.
"I didn't think instructors got hired. I thought they were 'volunteers'." He said.
"Well, I knew for a fact that you'd turn me down if I just asked you to be an instructor, so, I may or may not have petitioned the Ivoria Council to grant me a stipend that I'm allowed to pay you a salary with." She said.
Drake walked over to the futon, throwing himself into it and stretching out, groaning as he settled in.
"Oh? And how much are we talking, here?" He asked, his eyes alight with undisguised greed.
"The Council has agreed to provide you with a stipend of one hundred thousand credits per quarter. It's a tidy sum, when compared with the average person's income, but..." Allicity trailed off.
"Four hundred thousand credits a year is a pittance compared to what you could get from a professional Deihunting outfit." Dahlia finished.
Drake sat quietly on the futon, running his fingers through his short, brown hair as her thought to himself. Finally, with a rather evil looking smile on his face, he raised three fingers.
"I'll do it, so long as my three conditions are met without argument." He said.
"Wait... you'll - you'll do it?!" Allicity squeaked, her face one that showed her obvious expectation of being rejected.
"Yeah, why not? I was just starting to get bored, plus, I'll be getting paid." He smirked.
"I'm not sure the Council will be willing to accept your conditions, Drake. They probably want you of all people on a short leash." Dahlia sighed.
"A - actually, they gave me carte blanche to categorically agree to any conditions that he posed, so long as they don't involve a couple of restricted subjects." Allicity said in a small voice.
"Well wouldja listen there? It sounds like we're all gonna leave this office happy people." Drake said, sitting up with his hands clasped together.
"Firstly, I want the option of picking my own students." He said.
"Why? Wouldn't you just want four B-ranked students that basically already know how to be Deihunters?" Dahlia asked.
"Nope! I want to build some of these newbies from the ground up. To do that, I want the chance to make my own squad." He explained.
"Well, I dont think the Council would be too upset by something like that, even if an instructor's students are usually randomly selected." Allicity said.
"Cool, my second condition is that my instruction methods cannot ever be questioned by the Council. I don't want or need them breathing down my neck at every turn, and if I feel like that starts to happen, I'm just gonna quit." He said.
"That's a pretty hefty request, I doubt the Council would be willing to do something like-" Dahlia began, stopping when Allicity spoke.
"On behalf of the Ivoria Council, I accept this second condition." She said.
"You're joking, right?" Dahlia sputtered. "Ivoria is willing to give him permission to do essentially whatever he pleases with his students? Wouldn't that give him far too much power over the students?" She asked. "I can't honestly believe that they'd be alright with that."
"Actually, when they told me to 'do whatever it takes to get him to become an instructor', they only specified two things that I would have to outright refuse if he requested them, and both of those things have to do with the statuses of sitting Council members." Allicity explained. "Which is why I hope that your third request isn't something to do with the Council."
Drake laughed for a moment, before letting out a hiss of pain, clapping his hand over his right temple, eyes closed. When he opened them again, both Allicity and Dahlia had moved over to the futon, watching him anxiously. He grimaced and gestured for them to step back.
"Stop crowding me, it's not like it's here right now. We've still got another four months, at least." He said, rubbing the side of his head gingerly.
Both ladies moved back a bit and waited for him to continue, which he did after patting his own cheek.
"Anyway, funnily enough, my third condition actually has to do with *them* anyway. From now on, at least while I'm attending the academy, I want my team to have priority deployment against any Aevators that breach our dimension." He said, giving Allicity a knowing look. "And you might as well go ahead and agree, because we both know that I'll be able to find any Aevators before the alarms sniff them out."
Allicity looked genuinely conflicted at this, but, after a moment of consideration, sighed and nodded her head.
"Fine, but, I've got a condition of my own that I want you to agree to. Think of it like showing your sweetheart of an aunt a little bit of good will." She said, her expression turning grave.
"And what condition would that be?" He asked.
"Go to your god damned Trials!" She shouted. "And take them seriously! You didn't even show up to the end of year Trial last month, and the Trials you do attend you do the absolute bare minimum to stay at your current rank and leave. It's infuriating for me and your mom. Just promise me you'll abide by the same standards we hold the other students to."
Drake put on a defeated smile, and shrugged his shoulders, knowing he had walked into this argument headfirst.
"Well, I did kill an Aevator in November. I sorta felt like that was more than enough to qualify as an end of year Trial." He said.
"Yes, and, fortunately for you, the Council happened to unanimously agree on that. But! You can't just hunt and Aevator and proclaim that it's enough at the end of every year. The end of year Trials are to assess your growth over the last 12 months, and the Initialization Trials at the start of each year are meant to determine your rank." She huffed.
Drake turned slightly red at the mention of the Initialization Trials. He hadn't actually taken one since his first year, and, in all honesty, had 100% been planning on skipping this year's as well.
"Don't even think of not taking the Trial today! You take your butt downstairs and take your Trial right after you leave this office or so help me god! Don't make me have Dahlia shadow you everywhere you go, because I absolutely will." Allicity snapped.
"Can I at least take my Trial after I've picked my students?" He asked with a grimace.
Allicity thought for a moment, then gave a stiff nod. "Fine, but I'm sending Dahlia with you, she'll be sticking by your side until she's watched you take your Trial."
Casting an exasperated look at his sister, Drake hopped off of the futon and headed for the door.
"Good luck, sweetie!" Allicity said, transforming straight back into Aunt Mode, and giving Drake a cheery wave and a smile as she watched them close the door behind them on the way out.