[h2]Jen White[/h2]

After her dismal efforts in the Academy Tournament last year due to a combination of skipping classes (losing out on necessary information) and choosing to claim that a normal baseball bat was her Divine Gear, Jen had chosen to put more effort into it this time around. Well, 'chosen' was a misleading term. "The PE teacher had pushed her into taking it properly" was a more accurate statement off affairs.

A required part of putting in more effort was actually training against opponents using her proper sword rather than a wooden one. Given that the blonde disliked showing it off, it meant taking to only training once most people had left for the day or gotten involved in club activities; she got changed into a tracksuit, cleaned the many obviously mechanical parts on the old sword, and headed for one of the training rooms. This day was no different: ever pipe, wire, and even the odd piston was carefully checked over before Jen got going.

It was just her luck that the room she'd picked today was occupied and that the occupant was creepily staring at the door. Jen shifted the blade behind her back, once again feeling self-conscious about the amount of clunky parts creeping over the weapon, before asking Ruriko if she was done with the room.

[hr]

[h2]Tachibana Kaede[/h2]

On a bench between the school's main entrance and the shrine, close enough to the shrine that anyone particularly obnoxious could start a shouted conversation with the goddess if they really wanted to, there was a girl doing her best to take a nap. There were several unusual things about the girl: red hair despite being Japanese, wearing the boy's uniform despite being female in every regard, and even her choice of footwear was a bit odd. The strangest, though, was by far the most obvious.

She had no arms.

On the other hand, seeing her there was a pretty regular thing; Kaede had been taking a break on the bench every day there was good weather since she joined the school. Sometimes people decided to ask for help with homework. Sometimes she'd get approached to help with cleaning after some messy club activity, or if a classroom was in particular disarray. Sometimes students would stop and strike up a conversation. Most of the time, she got to take a nap undisturbed.

Kaede didn't think today was one of those days.