Chapter 2: When things change, when words fail you

A black-haired girl ran excitedly down the hall. "Where is it ...?", She wondered, panting. She ran and ran down the hallways ... how could hallways be so long ?! Slowly but surely the sweat was running from her forehead, she felt like she was running a marathon, or was the air conditioning broken? After all, it was summer ...

Tari stood impatiently in the canteen, as one of the last. Intuitively she had decided to wait for Daisuke, a restless feeling had gripped her the whole morning. Misaki was having a bad dream, and the atmosphere at breakfast earlier had been better between them all. "Not so ...reserved.", Tari suddenly shot the word through her head as she closed her eyes again and the short breakfast scene - they had only seen each other for a few minutes this morning - in her head again.

Tari sighed softly and looked impatiently at the watch. Daisuke had to go through the canteen to get into the classrooms, the other ways were temporarily closed due to construction work ... Slowly she was seriously worried. With a slight frown, she looked around searchingly. Had she missed him?

reserved. The word was still buzzing in her head. But this description of the situation before did not really suit her, made her dissatisfied. It stung her heart, Tari realized with astonishment. But why? Frowning, she looked around again and sighed again. She couldn't wait much longer. She stared at the door that led out of the canteen for another moment, but no one came. Her face, previously marked by a slight worry and a frown, was suddenly marked by sadness. The orange-haired woman's eyes filled with emptiness. With her shoulders hunched slightly, she turned away from the door and walked slowly towards the classroom.A black-haired girl was still running through the corridors of the School of Arms. "That can't be true, man ...", she huffed a little out of breath, and stopped for a moment. Desperate, she looked at the little sketch the secretary had made for her. She also frowned now, but for completely different reasons. "Great, totally lost !!", Noe Miharu talked dryly to herself. "Miau" suddenly made it quiet and something soft brushed her legs. “No Kuroi, imagine you can't help me!” With a touch of sarcasm, Noe continued on her way, Kuroi in her arms.

Sighing, Misaki looked around the class. She hardly knew any people here, at the School of Arms there was a coming and going of students. You didn't have to complete a certain number of classes here, rather the "learning speed" of a student depended on his fighting strength, eloquence, fighting strategy and of course, above all, on the point in time when you met his partner. The latter, however, was secondary to basic training; mainly one had to acquire a basic vocabulary as a weapon, as sacrifice the focus of the training was on the study of combat strategies.All these lines of thought made Misaki grumpy again ... among all these students her gun could be sitting, or she could be on the other side of the world.[i]It was desperate.

Suddenly she was struck by a violet-haired girl who was watching her surroundings with a more or less expressionless poker face. When she noticed Misaki's gaze, a faint smile crept over her lips and she waved lightly with the hand that she had lying casually on the table, only noticeable to the addressee. The brown-haired boy next to her noticed his neighbor's action and looked over at Misaki with sudden interest.

Misaki remembered her name,Faithless. If she remembered correctly, the girl was the sacrifice and the boy was the weapon. "Faithless ... how awful.", Misaki shot through her head as she waved back after a little hesitation and smiled faintly. The name of a couple not only influenced their fighting style, Misaki had often enough seen during her training at the school of weapons how the characters of the participants changed. The connections themselves were so complex that outsiders could not grasp them, and even older weapons and sacrifice looked in research teams for explanations, developed theories.

[i]"Fateless,... what a fate," Misaki thought with a touch of sarcasm. Everyone in this school had heard of Faithless before, they were almost notorious for their successes in the battle royals that were held in the school, and their sometimes limitless ambition. "What will happen to me when I hit my gun ...", Misaki shuddered at the thought of fundamentally changing. When she finally noticed that Faithless was still staring at her, she finally got up and spontaneously walked over to the violet-haired girl to join them.One last worried look at the clock: everyone seemed to be waiting for them today, Tari, Daisuke and Nagisa-sensei.

Meanwhile, two girls, one black-haired, the other orange-haired, were still hurrying down the hall. Noe was still being driven to the brink of madness by her unreliable card while Tari tried to understand herself, wondering why she was desperately driving herself mad.

"Why ...?" One echoed through his head.

"Where ...?" Asked the other.

Until they both turned the corner and both tried to slow down. Terror was reflected in both of their faces, recognition followed.

"Who ...?" Was the only question on both of their heads as they studied each other's face carefully."Noe ...?", suddenly Tari spoke, the one name echoed in her head. And again a blazing light shone, Noe stretched out her shining hand to Tari's, but this backed away ... She fell and fell until she lost consciousness, and yet at the last moment she felt something she had been doing since this morning so measured:joyshot through her in her last perception like an arrow, an all-moving realization ...

I am no longer alone.

Kohaku looked sideways at Hana, slightly puzzled, unnoticed by the rest. "How long have you been looking for contact with others?" He whispered, slightly puzzled. Not that it was unusual for Hana, but like everyone at the School of Arms, she rarely got involved in acquaintances. Even the fact that you shared a room in your time as an independent did not automatically mean that you made friends. To get involved with someone else, to seek friendship, to seek closeness to another was often associated with pain at the school of arms; a person's unknown fate determined one more than one would think.

The violet-haired woman looked at him, slightly amused."Why not? We don't know enough here anyway, besides, the day promises to be interesting." Imperceptibly, Kohaku raised an eyebrow and now also looked amused. “Since when have you been so interested in acquaintances?” Now Kohaku had Hana’s full attention, she turned her head to him. "Don't you know that?"

Of course he knew that too well. The two had been connected for a little while, and Kohaku felt part of their momentary feelings now as well. Hana hadn't been that happy since the beginning. At first she had seen school almost as a waste of time, until he suddenly became her partner. Hana did her best, started to study. And yet, Kohaku, who is actually a loner, knew that Hana had always been missing something, namely the friendship that most of them lacked here. He smiled. Of course he understood his sacrifice.

But suddenly an uncomfortable silence fell over the chaotic classroom. "Are you all going to stop the chatter?", It suddenly thundered. A female voice had smothered everyone else in the room. Involuntarily, all heads turned to the little curly-headed person who had built up on the desk. The apparently angry Nagisa-sensei complained loudly about the lack of discipline among her students; but she was the one who had come too late. Once again she complained about the sacrifice, which she blatantly disliked ... the class had started.

Indecisive, the gray-haired Alex and Daisuke sat opposite in two armchairs, each staring at a cup of tea in their hands. The uncertainty of the two and at the same time also the tension in the air were literally palpable. It was quiet. You could hear the ticking of the clock, which seemed so loud, and the distant splashing of water from the hot Goura springs, but none of this was perceived as disturbing.On closer inspection, behind the uncertainty ofFearlessthere was something else: unity and mutual understanding on an incomprehensible level.

Suddenly the door opened and Ritsu-Sensei, who was the generally strict, taciturn and cynicism-inclined director of the weapons school, came in. Almost in sync, Alex and Daisuke looked up, exchanged a brief look and looked at the director expectantly. The latter, however, did not even notice his guests at first, but was involved in a conversation.

"No Nana, I'm telling you, adding him to the organization is f- ... I don't care what Ritsuka Aoyagi says or does, it doesn't matter who the sacrifice is. Soubi-kun is still his own, stillme... Of course, as his former teacher, I am entitled to him! Come over later, I don't have the nerve to listen to you now. "

Without having raised his voice in any way, Ritsu-sensei sighed softly and then looked up, he had probably felt the looks of his two students. He looked questioningly at the two. "What's