[h3]Nazca Whitehall[/h3][i]Clockwork Autumn[/i]

It was at ten bells, as Nazca was about to draw her bath, when the Clocktower rang, and with it, the surge of energy and the flurry of locks clicking and doors slamming shut. Having long since honed her skills of stoicism, she didn’t jump at the sudden noises, although she found herself very cross with it all. The noise of the bells, while irritating, were alright, but the locking of the doors for curfew, in her mind, was insulting the honor and intelligence of the students it hosted. Especially so, with its implementation of the Starsteel Formation. 

…Not that Nazca would have always adhered to the curfew anyway. There were certain things in the night that required her investigation, including the fog, which she was instantly reminded of as her windows were covered by the pervasive opaque mist. Was the mist simply another means to keep the student body inside? She hadn’t inspected the doors or windows of her dorm thoroughly, but it was obvious that could be easily forced open. Of course, it would leave evidence of such an act, but a resourceful enough person could simply repair a window or a door the old-fashioned way, with enough skill. It was perplexing. 

Having a clue on the nature of the fog, though, made her think of the hawk she still had in the sky. Could she still get through to it? She was confident her drone was loitering high enough in the sky to not be affected by the fog, but if she couldn’t send out or communicate with any drones during curfew, that would be… less than optimal. Normally, she could control her clockwork drones reasonably well without any large and cumbersome devices, but when it came to long-range operations…

Nazca hastily pulled out a trunk –or more properly, and advanced wireless set in the shape of one—and set it upon her desk. She quickly went through the motions of setting it up, hooking up its battery, extending its long aerial, power up the device. Since she’d last used it right before the airship had landed to launch her hawk, it was still tuned into the right frequency. Using a switch that looked quite familiar to any wireless operators, she keyed out a command in her own proprietary code.

[i]Scout One. Acknowledge test signal.[/i]

She paused to listen to a reply. The clicks that came in response came in strong—short click, long click, short, short, long, modulated long—the correct identification code for the unit. That was good, it meant it was still in the air, and she could communicate with it by radio. She tapped in another pre-programmed command. 

[i]Scout One. Execute diagnostic test and report.[/i]

She waited patiently for the machine to test its servos, gyros, gears, and onboard equipment before reporting back. The full power test would significantly draw down its remaining power and flight time, but she was bringing it back in the next morning to collect its data anyway. After several minutes, the encoded beeps and clicks filled the airwaves again as the bird reported back its current altitude, speed, axes of orientation, rough position by dead reckoning, and other basic data—all indicating it was functioning correctly.

Satisfied, she gave it a few more tests—simple commands to increase and decrease altitude, and then moved on to more advanced commands, including proper formula-encoded ones. To her mild surprise, they executed fine, with a proper acknowledgement, although she didn't risk allowing it to descend enough that it might get caught in the fog. She wasn't sure what it would do her instruments yet, and it lacked the proper sensors to navigate blindly in a fog. Nonetheless, she would have to conduct experiments later.

She shut down the wireless set. Nazca would bring in the bird in the morning as planned. Her attention then wandered over to the locked door. Cracking open yet another trunk for more equipment, she brought out a set of tools. There really was a lot of overlap between a jeweler’s, watchmaker’s and a locksmith’s toolkits. Equipment in hand, she headed over to the locked doors, keen to find out its mysteries, the hard way or the easy way. Either way, she would have that door accessible—even if she had to fit a tungsten plate shim over the mechanism before curfew.

---

Unlike a certain other white-haired girl, though, Nazca wasn’t an extreme autist. Success or fail, once the night drew on for too long, she took her bath and then turned in for the night, only to be rudely awakened in the morning by the sounds of a public school announcement. 

With a mild bit of irritation, she rose and went through her morning routine –including brewing tea and bringing her bird back—before she headed over to the Central Monument Library for the curious ‘examination,’ piping hot tea in a thermos in hand.  

By the time she arrived at the library, she had a good inkling of what had happened. Even before arriving on sight, the lingering smell of burnt wood and the wispy remains of ashes rising into the morning sky was more than evident, and half-burnt, singed pieces of parchment and paper littered the streets and floated through the crowd on the occasional gust of wind. It hadn’t been a day, and a vast repository of knowledge was already gone—one that Nazca had fully intended to make use of. Her mood continued to sour.

Nonetheless, she remained curious at what had happened here. Unfazed at the youthful appearance of the school official with the unnecessarily fancy name, she frowned at his speech. Wouldn’t he get to the point?

The news of the Ottoman collapse was an interesting enough footnote, though, even if its imminent demise had been predictable. 

Far more interesting was the restrained and slightly singed form of Jeanne Du Bordeaux up upon the platform with her overly pretentious countryman. That girl had built quite the reputation for herself, and a controversial one, at that. She had been one of the ones that she had looked forward to speak to or observe—neither of which she had done, ironically, despite knowing that she had been assigned to the same dorm building as herself. 

The evidence on-site seemed damning. A burnt library, and a Frenchwoman with a reputation for arson. Nonetheless, she found herself agreeing with the Austrian fraud of all people. Guilt was determined in a trial, not established as pseudo-fact before one, even if all facts pointed towards her destruction of a library, and the lack of intervention of a mysterious witness was strange. Furthermore, even if she had a reputation for arson, what was her motive for burning a building down? On her first day? If anything, her reputation would make it less likely to be her-- the ideal candidate to frame. She wondered if the bird was able to manage to pick up any useful data during the night despite the fog.

It wasn’t her direct mission, but she decided to intervene. She raised a hand. 

[b]“I may not be an egoist, but I believe it would be only proper for some of her fellow dormmates to participate in her supervision alongside the volunteer.”[/b]

She gave a nod towards Ryuuko. The Japanese egoist, was it? 

There was something more to this than meets the eye, and Nazca needed to know.