Work Text:
Set between chapter 25 and chapter 26
"What is it, Sugino-kun?" Karasuma asked the teen who had walked into the teacher lounge room with squared shoulders and a determined glint. Now that was an enough jarring scene since the same boy was sitting in the classroom only yesterday with eyes vacant and mind uncomprehending of the lessons taught in the classroom.
The raven haired boy stood before the agent and suddenly bent in a deep bow, making the man's brow rise in surprise. "Please teach me how to fight!"
"Excuse me?" Dark blue eyes looked up and Karasuma was struck by the gaunt face and pale skin, which constrasted to the desperate blazing blue fire in those orbs.
"Please teach me how to fight strong enemies, Karasuma-sensei," Sugino repeated himself, his hands clenching to fists and lower lip quivering faintly, "I... I wasn't able to save Nagisa because I was too weak and I need... no, I must fix that."
"Sugino-kun," Karasuma's eyes narrowed and the man turned fully to the boy, putting his pen down and folding his arms, "No one could have predicted that Nagisa-kun would get shot nor that he would get targeted. Everything that happened in those three weeks was out of our hands. Now, get back to class and perhaps do ring that psycologist I recommended—"
"No!" Sugino bursted, blue fire blazing brighter, angrier, hungrier, "I am not letting that excuse dissuade me again. What if another of our classmates get targeted? What if I get targeted? I am not happy sitting on my ass, twidling my thumbs until that happens."
Karasuma sighed. "So what do you want to do? PE is still—"
"How about teaching him more advanced techniques?" The two turned to the woman who was typing in a laptop at the other end of the room, nearly undetectable if not for the screen's bright light washing over her tired face.
Ilana turned to them and gave a sad smile, Sugino seemingly calming down from his anger as he greeted her. "Good afternoon, Ilana-sensei."
"Good afternoon, Sugino," Ilana greeted back and turned to the sharp eyed agent, "I know some taekwondo from my earlier years and you can add your own martial arts. You're getting too soft with them if you deny them from more training."
"I do not," Karasuma felt a tick form in his eye.
"Karasuma-sensei," Sugino tried again, drawing his attention, "Even though our class isn't in any... immediate danger, we still have to go after Koike Masato and Yanagisawa to make sure that nothing of the sort will happen again... I want to be ready for anything."
Karasuma stared at the boy, his eyes calculating even though inside he was gaping. How much did this whole ordeal changed the raven haired baseball lover? Before everything started, he never thought things so thoroughly and this level of maturity? Unheard of.
It should have made him proud. Under any other circumstances, he would have been. But because he knew how that change came to be, his pride was exchanged to sadness. He was sad that this bright boy had been trampled by the real world and was now a young man with an old weary soul.
He took a deep breath and nodded. "Alright, I will train you alongside Ilana."
"Really?" Sugino's eyes brightened and his face glowed in a way that was almost forgotten.
His eyes softened. "Yes, but I will expect nothing less than a hudred percent from you."
"Of course!" Sugino bowed again and raced out of the room, body vibrating with purpose. Black eyes turned from the closing door to the woman on the other end of the room, who had returned to her laptop but looked up again when she noticed his stare.
"What is it, Karasuma-san?"
"Did I... Did I make the right decision?" He asked, sighing heavily, knowing that the woman would understand his strife. She blinked, confused before her face softened and she smiled kindly.
"Yes, you did."
And that was it.
The first session was disastrous.
It was only twenty minutes but Sugino was already breathing heavily, hands braced on his knees as he tried to gulp in air, sweat dripping from his face. Karasuma was standing before him, not a bead of sweat on his body yet his eyes were approving.
"You're in a good condition, but you need to work on your weaknesses like your tendency to be obvious of your next attack or favoring one side for your punches. You didn't even manage to land one hit on me."
"That's because you're superhuman," Ilana commented from her chair, eyes glinting in excitement. Irina, who was dragged in, was nodding in agreement, face red and hand clasped over her nose.
"Irina, is everything alright?" Karasuma asked when he noticed her action, sighing when Sugino and Ilana started laughing, "I should have guessed."
"Guessed what?" Irina bristled, rubbing her nose in her sleeve and standing up, "You should just teach him the moves first before beating him up, it'll make him understand more of the fight system since he's just a brat after all." She waved to Ilana and walked inside the classroom, the break over.
"Then I know what next lesson would be." Ilana nodded while Sugino bowed in thanks to Karasuma and rushed to get changed before going back to class.
Karasuma accepted the bottle of water the scientist offered him and sat in the chair Irina vacated moments ago. "Am I being too harsh on him?"
Ilana chuckled. "Why are you asking me all those questions? You're the teacher."
"Am I?" He asked again, deadly serious and she quieted down, her sketch book which had a very familiar face on it lowering onto her lap. She sighed and looked at the sketch, fishing out a light blue pencil and filling in the large orbs.
"Perhaps... perhaps not," She started, her grip tightening on the pencil, "But he wants to be stronger and that will is strong enough that a simple harsh traning would not deter him. Don't back away just because you're scared of messing up again. Don't do it to your students again," She placed down the pencil and slapped a hand to her mouth as her shoulders shook. Karasuma let her sob in silence as he took in the clearing where everything started and ended. After the police came and collected Nagisa's body, they had started cleaning up, fixing anything that could be fixed and throwing away anything that was destroyed completely.
The students were cleaning as if they were robots; silently and efficiently. The classes were quiet and only the teachers' voice and the rustle of writing were heard in the dead place. Karma didn't come to school unless it was for a test or by one of the female teachers - usually Ilana as the woman lived closer to the redhead - dragging him into the classroom. Kaede was lifeless for the past two weeks, almost never reacting to anything. Only now was she slowly snapping out of her mourning.
The others were better, but any brightness the octopus managed to bring into the classroom vanished, only gloom remaining behind.
Irina and him offered them to see a professional once, but only few actually went and none continued for long. Kurahashi had explained that they knew why they are like that, but that it was too soon to get better and to just give them time.
They only needed time.
It was something that he heard so many times since this nightmare begun.
Time. Just more time.
He hated that word so much right now.
A week later, Sugino managed to surprise Karasuma and deliver a kick into his side.
The boy was so suprised that he halted, which gave the black haired man an opening to fling the boy to the floor and restrain him. Sugino stared with wide eyes at him and Karasuma smiled faintly, standing up and offering his hand to the student.
"You did a very good feint, but don't freeze when you hit me," He reprimeded the teen, who nodded before smiling widely in reminiscence of his past grins.
"I was just surprised I managed to hit you. Next time I won't falter," Sugino promised.
"Good, now get in place, we're doing it again," Karasuma said with pride in his tone as he went into his usual form.
The next day, the day of the graduation ceremony, Karasuma woke up with a strange feeling. Something similar to the feeling he got on the civil war day. On the fateful day everything went to hell.
He contacted Ritsu immediately and asked for anything amiss. The AI eyed him then smiled and opened a notebook, glasses perched on her nose, "The police are following a lead which is 86.8% solid. I am monitering their movements and deduce that in the following six hours a result will come up."
"Thank you, Ritsu."
"You're welcome," Ritsu smiled and the screen returned to the home screen. Karasuma immediately dialed Irina's number.
"What is it, Karasuma? It's five in the morning!" Irina's irritated voice cut the silence and Karasuma huffed in exasperation despite his expression softening.
"Ritsu thinks that there might be a chance of us finding the whereabouts of Koike Masato today."
Irina went silent. "... Are you serious?" She asked after a long while, her tone contained but the anger unmistakable.
"Yes."
"... I'll tell Ilana."
"Tell her to get Karma's prosthetic as well. He was the one assigned to the assassination request by Lovro after all."
"Don't remind me of that lousy master," Irina growled and Karasuma tensed in suspicion, "Where the hell did he disappear to anyways?"
"Irina, you seem more hostile than before, what's going on?" He demanded.
She didn't answer him. "Irina, we learned that holding back information only harmed us, I need to know what's going on."
"It's not important anymore. To be honest, I'm glad I found out about that."
"About what?"
She sighed. "I wondered who the assistant was so I asked Ritsu and she showed me a picture of the man... I didn't recognize him before since it has been almost seven years since I saw him last and I was a kid."
"Who was he?"
"Raiko, a psychopath Master had been forced to take under his wing. He was my senior."
"I see..." He glared a hole into the wall. To think that an assassin would become something so despicable. "Tell me the details later, but thank you for sharing it with me, I'm sure it wasn't easy."
"Well, you forget the part where you forced me to tell you," She grumbled, "Anyways, some calls to make and brats to send to the adult world. See you," She hung up and left the man in silence of his apartment.
"Thank you for training me," Sugino bowed to him that evening when they returned from the assassination. Karasuma offered a pleased smile.
"Kaede reported to me your fighting style and I am proud of what you accomplished. You have helped your classmates and need to be proud of that fact."
"I will, and I will continue to do my best," Sugino smiled wearily, the adrenaline ebbing away and leaving him exhausted, then he bowed and exited the bus. Irina and Ilana smiled to each other and grinned at him.
"Aren't you glad you listened to him?" Irina teased.
Karasuma nodded gravely. "I do and I will make sure not to forget that lesson again."
Irina deflated and Ilana chuckled. "You're too serious, Karasuma-san, I don't know what Irina finds in you."
"Wha-? Ilana!" Irina sputtered, face beet red and Ilana laughed. Karasuma smiled thinly and stood up, passing by the girls.
"We should head home so don't dally behind."
"Yeah, yeah, cap'," Ilana rolled her eyes and Irina huffed, standing up and dragging the sniggering scientist to the other exist.
Karasuma took a deep breath and looked over the empty seats. "Did we do right by you, Nagisa-kun? Can you rest now?"
He didn't get an answer and his shoulders squared as he shook his head. What was he thinking to himself, talking to the air? He shouldn't go mental, the students (Former students. He would need to get used to saying that) still need him. He walked down the stairs and locked the bus behind him, mentally noting to return it the next day.
A sudden breeze passed by and he felt a chill come up his spine. He looked around him but saw nothing amiss. Narrowing his eyes but chalking it up to paranoia, he went to his car and drove away, shaking any images of snakes and blue eyes from his head.
Back in the empty park, in the abandoned bus, blue eyes flashed in the mirror followed by fluttering long locks and a kind smile.
Thank you...