Looking over the conference room, Alisha found the sight amusing despite her own emotional uphevals. She had her room to herself last night, something she hadn't experienced since she was six. It was remarkably peaceful. She figured Yukiko would be returning that night, so she took full advantage of the single night of freedom.
In all honesty it was a bit too quiet, and it allowed her to think on the day to the point of obsession. She'd ended up going to bed early to escape from them, casting a small sleep spell on herself. The effect of the spell would end when she fell asleep, but by then its job was done.
As a result she was remarkably fresh that morning by her standards. The required cup of coffee was almost enough to make the morning worthwhile.
Naturally neither her roommate or her sister were at this meeting as they continued their recovery from yesterday. Having already spent too much time thinking about them last night she shoved her concerns away and looked at the three others in the room.
She suspected Simon was suffering from a hangover, if the slightly pained expression was to be believed. It was hard to be sure though. She had trouble reading his alien features still. He definitely was doing his best to avoid the bright sunlight outside however, going so far as to wear a pair of shades. She had already picked up on the fact he enjoyed the sun to an inhuman level (Alisha mentally flinched at the use of the word 'inhuman' in regards to her chimera teammate), which only served to confirm her suspicion.
If she only suspected Simon of a hangover, Ana's was a given. All the makeup in the world wouldn't hide the bags under her eyes, and the pinched look that indicated a headache. The icing was the pained look Alisha had received when she gave Ana an entirely to loud and happy 'good morning.' If she was a vindictive woman she probably would have kept that tone.
The most amusing of the bunch however was First-Lieutenant Hawkinson. She didn't think he was hung over. The man had to have an iron bar up his ass as stiff as he was. There was no chance the man drank. He hadn't slept much however, that was clear. He had a slightly fuzzy look about him, and he must have bribed some of his friends to get their coffee rations because that mug he was using was definitely larger than regulation.
She had to wonder where the first two had found alcohol. She'd started looking around for where the real bars were on campus. She knew they were there, but being underclassmen she hadn't found a source yet. Not that she drank, but the best parties happened where people did. It was a given that Ana was the one who would find one. It would be a simple matter for a decent spy.
No matter how you sliced it she was the most conscious person in the room, and that simply didn't happen in the morning. How could she not be amused?
Everyone had just taken their seats after their commander uncerminoiously took his. "Sorry for not being in better condition," he started, which was a bit of a breach of protocol. Generally speaking superior officers didn't apologize for anything. "I have done some initial investigations over the night and come up with a list of potential contributors to yesterdays incident."
Alisha's respect went up a couple of notches at that start. Judging by his condition she didn't think he was overstating things when he said 'over the night.' If anything he looked to be understating his efforts.
"Normally this investigation is left in the official authority's hands, but I have received special permission to look into this as well. I'm going to make this a field assignment for the squad. Any objections?"
There were no objections from Alisha, who had every reason to want to find out what had happened. Neither of her other teammates seemed inclined to object either, not that they really had any say. She did have a question however. "You sound like you think this was some sort of attack?"
"I know it was, and the headmistress agrees."
That didn't make sense. "Sir, who would want to attack my sister.. I mean Private O'Neal?"
Though his eyes still looked like they were having trouble maintaining focus, he managed to look at her with a remarkably piercing gaze. "Aside from Private O'Neal and the people who attacked her, you are the one best suited to answer that question."
A shrug of the shoulders and a thoughtful look was all she could reply with as she ran through the names of everyone they knew, friend or foe, to find any suspects and coming up with nothing. Simultaniously she asked "Why do you think it was an attack?"
"There was sabotage involved that prevented the ERT from mobilizing." He reached into a pholio and pulled out several sheets of paper. "There were at least two participants. The one who stopped the ERT, and another who attacked Private O'Neal by blocking the perception of her depleted state."
That caught Alisha by surprise. "Blocked Sir?"
"Correct," he nodded. "That was the only explanation the lead doctor could come up with in response to the level of depletion she had reached."
There was a slight feeling of shame as she realized how much she had blamed Carole, how angry she had been at her sister, for something that had never been her fault. Okay, maybe more than a slight bit.
He had walked around the table until he stood behind Ana. "We're going to start by minimizing this list of possible suspects." He laid the paper in his hands onto the conference table in front of her. "These are the people unaccounted for in the infirmary when you requested help. Take your time and go over the names. If you saw someone not on this list please let me know so we can add him."
"Yes Sir," his subordinate responded instantly. Ana had seemed to be the type to be insubordinate on principle when they had first met, but for whatever reason that trait hadn't ever manifested. Either Alisha had misread her, which she didn't think she had, or the first-lieutenant had found a way to curb that rebelliousness.
"Once she is done I'm going to organize the suspects by track, and give those on that track to the corresponding members of this squad." Their C.O. looked across the table at her. "I want you to look at the full list first and see if you recognize any of the names. Any names you think is the least bit suspicious I'll take care of personally."
He then fixed his attention back on Ana. "Private Mutet, covering your suspects is going to be the most important. The number of rogue candidates are substantially fewer, but given the nature of these attacks they are also the most suspicious."
That admission surprised Alisha at first. Perhaps it shouldn't have. Ana's reason for being on the team hadn't been spoken of directly. It was obvious that she was skilled enough to be on the team. Alisha hadn't finished leaving the area during their combat assessment when Ana had attacked Yukiko. Being 'dead' she couldn't warn her future roommate of the coming attack, but she could appreciate the skill that had gone into it.
Alisha understood without that skill she wouldn't be here, but she had worked out the other half as well. Just like working with a chimera was inevitable, working with a rogue of any stripe was a necessity. You needed to be able to trust them when that happened.
That wasn't going to be likely to happen in her case. Necessary or not they were trained liars. There was no getting around that in her mind. The chimera had a better chance, and Alisha still suspected him as being the bandit who'd killed so many of the merchants coming to her city. Silver scales was not a common occurrence.
That reality didn't mean that he had to avoid saying the obvious. He had to acknowledge it because it was obvious. If he avoided it that would only devalue their trust in him.
Ana certainly didn't make any bones about it. "This will take me some time. How did this person cancel the alert?"
"She posed as you and gave an all clear. It is an assumption at this point that it is a she. She used magic to obfuscate her appearance so anything is possible."
Hung over or not, Ana was quick on her feet. "Could they be trying to destabilize the team as a whole by making me the prime suspect?"
Maybe she wasn't as awake as she thought. It wasn't because she hadn't thought of that possibility herself that was a surprise. It was that the assassin seemed to accept being framed without taking it personally.
Their commander leaned back and thought about it. "Possible. This is your area of expertise. If that was your mission, how would you go about it?"
"I would go about it differently than this. I would have made the attack against Carole more obvious while framing the rogue. I think this route, if that was its intention, is better however. When they made the attack on Carole look like an accident we wouldn't be looking for an outside attacker. That would make framing me more damaging. It would look like I was just being malicious." She paused to let everyone absorb that line of thought before continuing. "However how they framed me was sloppy. They should have done it so the frame job couldn't been figured out so easily. Because of that the attempt was useless."
Hawkinson nodded his understanding. "I don't think using you was intended as a frame-up. As you said, it's sloppy, but it's something to keep in mind while we look into it."
"Sir, you say we're going to investigate the potential suspects. How are we going to go about that?" Alisha asked.
"Carefully." Was that a joke? No, it couldn't have been.
The meeting hadn't been a complete nightmare as he had feared. The remainder of their time was spent discussing first what happened to Carole and Yukiko, and then less exciting topic of their performances on the obstacle courses. That second was a bit stilted with two of the participants not there, but of the ones that were made some headway (he hoped) on getting passed their performance problems.
He'd noted that Ana was noticeably hung over, but hadn't made an issue of it. He would need to speak to her about it later however. Aside from it making it difficult to keep his end of the bargain without alerting the rest of the team was one reason, of course, but the other, larger, end was her bringing Simon down with her.
He had no doubt that was a bit of mischief on her part. She didn't drink simply to drink. She did it for a purpose. The only clear purpose here that he could see was to get closer to the chimera and sink her claws into him. She was not violating the deal, but she was walking a thin line.
He didn't have time to talk to Ana after the meeting. Immediately after it ended he had one of his classes, Army Maintenance, which was specific to officers. Having both normal classes and officer classes left him as busy as someone with two tracks like Private Sato.
Between that class and his next he took the time to interview the head of the rogue track. He had no doubt one of his students was at least responsible for the planning of the coordinated effort if not among the attackers himself.
He left enlightened. He understood that, like soldiers, rogues had a set number of spells specific for them. He had not realized how many, or how varied. Most of all, he hadn't realized how sneaky. The number of ways this attack could have been accomplished was staggering.
It could have been done through drugs as well, but Professor Avery had shot down that possibility based on timing. While drugs with delayed activation were possible, timing the delay was not easy. In this case it would have been impossible. With the amount of exertion from the obstacle course any drug would have either gone off during that, or been burned out of her system.
Spells however were doable. Blocking the ability to notice how drained you were was one of the spells, but not something that could be done from a distance. There were spells that would allow a rogue to approach unnoticed, but the rings took that into account, bringing up a heads-up regardless if you consciously saw it or not.
So that meant they hadn't seen the attacker at all.
That was a vexing problem. A spell that had to be done while close when there was no way to get close. Yet obviously it had been done somehow.
The manner in which the infirmary was removed from the equation was even harder. The thought he had on how it had happened turned out to be also impossible. If the woman had used magic to blur out her features on a psionic level the correct memories of her features would have appeared after she ended the spell.
The more direct act of placing an illusion over her features of Private Mutet would allow those memories to remain when she left. The trouble was he would remember her face clearly afterwards, and the heads-up wouldn't have been triggered.
Actually in either case the heads up wouldn't act as it had. If he knew who it was it wouldn't show, and if he did know it would show the correct information.
He had gone to the professor hoping for answers, and only left with more questions.
After his second class Private Mutet arrived with her narrowing and additions to his list. Another advantage to the school rings was that it didn't simply work for faces. A name she didn't recognize would produce the same display, which included the picture of the person in question. She was very thorough and managed to add a few names.
She had also managed to remove more. While Damien had been able to eliminate the doctors and nurses in the unit, she was able to eliminate others by skill sets. More accurately, a lack of skill sets that would allow for that style of deception.
Daniel suspected that Ana was putting some extra effort into this because of the fact she was the one who had been targeted to be framed. Not that that mattered. What mattered was the list had been shrunk down to nine. That was a very manageable number. Four were teachers, which he would handle personally. Of the remaining five, four were rogues. Those would be Ana's responsibility.
The last one he would assign to Alisha. If Daniel didn't keep her involved and busy she was likely to go rogue and investigate on her own. He couldn't have that. The headmistress had given him permission to investigate based on his maturity and training. Alisha hadn't earned the respect of either yet, and because it was about her sister she was going to allow her emotions direct her to some degree. He needed her to keep him advised, so he in turn could advise her.
Before leaving for his next class he advised Private Mutet they needed to speak tomorrow before their drills on the parade grounds. As he'd told her before, she was bright. He knew she'd work out why before they saw each other.
After his third class he made a quick detour to the infirmary one last time. As he suspected Alisha was there, so he passed her the name she was to look into, then checked how her sister and Yukiko were doing. The doctor assured him that Yukiko was going to be released before the end of the day and Carole should be recovered enough tomorrow to resume classes.
He filled in both of the admitted students with the details of what was suspected, though he figured both already knew most of them from Alisha. It was good to be thorough in case the private had forgotten something, so the second telling was worthwhile.
Upon leaving, he had to laugh mentally. If anyone thought that Private Sato was simply here for her own amusement, as the idle rich were known to do, they would have forgotten it seeing her. Continued attendance was dependent on the salability of your contract upon graduation. Normally that meant if your performance was substandard you were out. Sato's contract was guaranteed to be bought by her father however. She didn't need to study so hard.
Yukiko had managed to get all of her homework, as well as a large number of notes on the lectures she'd missed, and had been busy studying when he arrived. Then she had returned to both when he left. There was extra-credit he had noticed on the meal tray still to be gotten to, and on top of that were questions she had written for her teachers clarifying any information. She was not going to allow this absence to harm her grades.
Carole still had a slightly glazed look to her eyes from whatever drugs they had her on. He wasn't sure she would be putting as much effort into her studies. Ana and Carole had the same lack of respect when it came to them, and unlike Yukiko she had no guarantees for her continued presence at DMA.
At least currently. From what he gathered Private Mutet's track had been uniquely designed around not just her skills, but to her personality. She would find them useful and immersive. He had to decide how he was going to motivate Carole to the same degree.
At sixteen-hundred hours his last class finished, and he felt the final vapors of his energy leave him. He headed towards his bunk as directly as possible and passed out only slightly after setting his alarm for an hour before his date.
Letting go of the troubles with his squad, he fell asleep with a smile on his face. His last thoughts were of the possibilities for that night. He woke up in dread as his roommate shook him in the morning. He'd forgotten to wind his clock.
Susan's going to give me hell for this.
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