Story: It's Fate: Gossipy Destiny

Here is some more It's Fate! And it occurs that sometime soon, Sirocco and I will have to sit down and really think about what the remaining commands are.




It was the end of gym class, and two girls lingered behind in the locker room. One was cowering a little before the other, who was smiling. Not a friendly kind of smile, mind. It was a different sort. The sort you’d see on a predator about to strike. The sort that warned of imminent danger unless certain things were restated to mean something entirely different to what it sounded like they meant.

“In summary,” Saito said through that smile. “I sent the three of you to do something simple, like break into the locker room. Plant a few pictures in a locker. Leave undetected. Instead what happened was...?”

“It wasn’t my fault!” Yoko insisted. “The shrimp showed up, pulling his sympathetic wimp act and then - and then those two clumsy idiots slipped and made enough of a racket to attract attention! Shame they didn’t break their clumsy legs from the fall or splatter their brains across the floor!”

Saito didn’t say a word. She just stared Yoko down, and she began to explain exactly what happened next.

<hr>
“Alright,” Mr Moritsu said. “If it’s not what it looks like, then please do tell me exactly why I’m seeing two girls lying on the floor in the boy’s locker room surrounded by pictures - which had I found them in the possession of any boy in school would have gotten them expelled - and what appear to be marbles.”

“Th-the marbles are mine, sir!” Eito said. “I - I read a fortune this morning that warned something terrible would happen if... if I didn’t carry marbles around with me!”

“I see,” Mr Moritsu said, nodding towards the open locker. “Bit of an odd coincidence that they happened to be breaking into your locker.”

Yoko cowered, not wanting to draw the teacher’s attention upon herself. Her fellow Golden Salmon clamoured to their feet, Yumi arriving there first and straightening herself out as easily as breathing.

“The photos are his, Mr Moritsu!” she said, twirling her foot innocently on the floor. “We heard that he’s been blackmailing girls into letting him take pictures of them, and -”

“And kept them in his locker at school rather than at home?” Mr Moritsu interrupted. “Or perhaps he was planning to sell them? A risky strategy considering I know for a fact that these girls are all dating boys that would kick his ass if they got so much of a whiff of this.” He shook his head, and sighed. “Come along, the three of you. We’ll have a discussion about what you were <i>really</i> doing in this locker room in my office. If you’re lucky, you’ll just be prevented from attending the swim meet!”

“Ah!” Eito gasped. “P-Please sir, I don’t - I don’t want to see them in too much trouble! I’m sure this is all some sort of misunderstanding!”

“A misunderstanding that leads to these two being in the boy’s locker room, while this one prowls about outside? Should be interesting to hear their story! You head off to the bathroom and let me deal with these three, Eito. Unless of course, your desire to go there as mysteriously vanished?”

He looked at the three of them with a helpless expression, like he’d just been told he’d run over some little girl’s pet cat. Eito swallowed nervously, and pointed at Yoko. “She told me s-something was going to happen in the locker room before gym. I- I didn’t want anyone to get into trouble so -so I decided to deal with it myself.”

The teacher nodded at that. “You really are too kind hearted for your own good, Eito. Very well. Yoko, pick up those photos and bring them to my office. Eito, pick up those marbles before someone else steps on any of them. Then return to your class.”
<hr>

At the end of it all, Yoko’s breath was ragged. She hated having to do debriefings like this, hated hated hated it. That stare, that smile, that tapping of her foot as she waited for the details. Please don’t ask any more questions. Please don’t ask any more questions. Please don’t tap that foot any more before it gets jammed in a locker until it falls off!

“And so we see the insidiousness of our adversary,” Saito said, her stare shifting as though seeing right through Yoko. “Of all the boys in class to appear at that time, isn’t it a bit strange that he would be the one to appear?”

Yoko nodded enthusiastically. That was a little odd.

“He must have somehow anticipated our plan, and used it as an opportunity to weaken our group! He even went to the trouble of saving you, no doubt intending to sow discord in the ranks! Hah! That only goes to show that he underestimates us, just as we underestimated him!

But we can use this to our advantage, Yoko! We may have taken a hit on this day, but that means the Golden Salmon will hit back all that much harder! Here is what I want you to do...”

<hr>
The speed of light within a vacuum is believed to be the absolute upper limit for the universe. A constant that cannot be broken, as insisted upon by current understanding of physics. In the strictest sense it is not entirely true as there is one thing that is much, much faster... Or at least can appear like it at times. It is not only fast, but deadly. The damage it can inflict if left unchecked is vast, and yet efforts to check it have the potential to make it that much worse. It is fast. It is toxic. It is vile. It is -

“Hey, did you hear what happened in gym class? That wimp Eito scored with two of the Golden Salmon in the boy’s locker room! Lucky bastard!”

- High school gossip.

If there was a hole anywhere nearby he could crawl into, Eito would do so. It wasn’t really the gossip that made him feel that way (though it didn’t exactly help!) but more to do with how it reminded him... Those two girls got in trouble because of him. Sure, they were apparently planning to plant pictures that would’ve wound up with him catching all manner of hell, but he didn’t really hold it against them. They must have had their reasons.

More to the point was a growing concern regarding collateral damage. Were other girls going to wind up hurt in some manner because of his instructions to Fate? What about the consequences for following Fate’s instructions?

“Isn’t he also friends with that Chise chick? Nobody should be that lucky!”

What he really needed was someone to talk to, someone to air out these concerns with. Chise was too risky, and besides which... Besides which she had her own problems to deal with (that he may have inadvertently caused somehow), and talking about it with Koemi didn’t quite seem appropriate either. He needed someone else, someone that wasn’t involved in the situation...

Just at the same moment as Eito picked a spot to sit down and open up his lunch, he heard a nervous voice behind him. “Um... Hi? Oh wow, that looks amazing!”

Eito looked up at the girl from outside the locker room. She still seemed a bit nervous, but much less so than before. He nodded in response to the question, remembering his instruction for lunchtime. Share lunch.

“I’m Yoko Tsutomu,” she said. “I just wanted to thank you for helping me out like that. If I had been suspended from the swim meet, I don’t know what I would have done!”

“Rip out my spleen?”

The girl winced and shrunk in her seat a little. Probably not a good time for jokes.

“B-But because of how you saved me, the other girls think I’m a stooge! My own friends k-kicked me out, and - and I think you’d be much better company than those ingrateful snakes! Makes me want to give them scalp massages with a cheese grater!”

“I’m sorry about your friends,” Eito said, momentarily forgetting his own problems in the face of what poor Yoko had to deal with. Yes, it made perfect sense that her friends would think that she had betrayed them, given what he’d said in front of those other two. Even when he tried to help out, without following Fate’s advice he still managed to screw things up! How could he make this right? How could he make it up to this poor girl that got caught up in all of this?

One step at a time seemed the best answer. To which end, he offered her a little of this rather delicious lunch.
<hr>
“There you are!” Koemi chuckled, leaning outside the girl’s locker room door. The door in question had just opened, and through them had progressed Chise’s breasts and then the girl herself. “I thought you opened the window and floated away!”

“Not the time for that, Koemi!” Chise yelled. “Besides which, I would have thought you would be more interested in the gossip surrounding Eito.”

Koemi nodded, and smiled a smile she didn’t really feel. “It is best to keep abreast of what people get off their chest,” she remarked. “But I don’t buy it! The Golden Salmon? Interested in Eito?”

“It doesn’t quite have the ring of truth to it, does it?” Chise sighed. “Given his recent odd behaviour... Something’s up with him and it’s driving me up the wall! Why won’t he tell us what’s going on?”

“Oh, you know how gossip is. It’s like a game of Chinese Whispers! Say one thing, then it gets turned into something else and passed along. I’m sure the whole thing is just... Some... Big...Misunderstanding.”

Koemi stopped dead in her tracks and stared ahead of her at something that should be completely impossible. It was Eito. Sharing his lunch with Yoko Tsutomi. She wanted to say something in response to this. Say anything at all. The words wouldn’t come. No matter what she might have wanted to say, the words simply wouldn’t come. It felt like a knife was passed through her back, pierced her heart and was poking out through her ribs. She turned on her heel, took a few deep breaths to try and calm herself, and tried very hard not to think about why she felt like this.

    Eito and Yoko converse, while Chise eavesdrops.
    Chise joins the two of them.
    Chise goes after Koemi to try and calm her down.
    Something else