Chapter Text
They were under the tree in the school yard again, not in their human forms yet. Brother was meticulously describing his scouting plan to her, as he usually did. Truth is Rin wasn't following much of it, as she was busy thinking of what clothes to materialize her form with. It was proving quite challenging because she had never really paid much attention to human clothing. She had Miku's ridiculous shoe idea down, but when she tried to think of anything else all she could come up with were vague ideas rather than well defined pieces of clothing.
She did remember a type of short pants she had seen on a woman she interrogated once pretty well.They were short and tight to her body, with a cute leather strap holding them at her waist. Rin thought that they'd be a nice change from the loose skirt. She also remembered seeing a variety of hats, as she was usually flying above humans. But she didn't recall seeing any school-humans wear hats, so maybe teenagers didnt like doing it. Or it was somehow forbidden to wear in the school.
This is where Brother interrupted her thoughts.
“Sister?”
“Ah! Sorry…I was listening!” She looked at him apologetically.
He stared back at her with a mix of disappointment and tiredness.
“What you need to remember is to call for me whenever you feel something going wrong; if you wait for the demon to show itself there's a chance it will attack you before you can tell me.” He said with his somewhat usual high and mighty tone. Nothing in the code spoke of such a measure, but it seemed like Brother was very eager to get on the demon action alongside Sister.
She nodded.
“I will be scouting the city, if I find anything odd I will make sure to call you.”
She nodded again, much like a child.
“So you understand?” He looked at her, seeming slightly confused. Brother knew what nodding meant, but protocol instructed that all angel communication happen as verbally as possibly, to avoid misunderstandings. And while Sister did occasionally use….other parts of herself to communicate to him, she seemed weirdly not talkative today.
“Oh…Yeah, affirmative!” She chirped.
At least she didn't seem too tired.
Brother quickly got off his feet, and started fluttering his wings.
“Good…I'll get going now.” He said, hovering above the ground. “Remember what we talked about, you-”
“Oh yes yes!” Sister had the impulse to wave at him but stopped herself last second. “I remember, have no worries!”
Brother flew away, far beyond her field of vision.
She let out a sigh of relief and then squealed to herself. Rin then started sprinting towards the school, trying her hardest not to trip on the uneven, bumpy lawn.
~~~~~~~~
Rin entered the highschool wearing what could only be described as a not very school appropriate outfit. She had very long, knee high black shoes for a start. Coupled with a pair of tight grey shorts, she was really rocking an outfit that would make Teto blush.
Her t-shirt was the same as before, plain white and not too form fitting, seeming a little bit out of place when compared to the other articles of clothing. The orange charm bracelet dangled on her arm as she skipped along the empty hallways of the school. She felt large quantities of human heat emanating from the other side of the walls.
“Ohh…Right, It's probably class time now.” She pouted, as she looked around the corridor. There were so many details she hadn't noticed before now: decorated lockers, posters, human garbage on the ground. The walls were of a matte, yellowish white colour with no accents to them. The floor was of a sad blue, clearly weathered by all the years of getting stomped on by various people.
She stopped next to some lockers, and looked around. A big human disk, mounted right on the wall, told her the time with its monotonous ticks. She correctly deduced that it was counting seconds, which meant the characters on it probably told her how many had already passed. Characters which she could not read. The short needle of the clock was pointing to the fourth character on the clock…or was it the third? Where exactly was she supposed to start counting from if the characters were arranged in a circular fashion?
She sighed. So she had to wait for the humans to leave their classrooms to find Miku.
“Oh well, I've done so many years of paperwork! I'm sure a couple minutes spent here will go by in no time!” She said out loud, with a hint of overconfidence.
She let her back rest against the wall. It was cold, with an unpleasant rough texture. Rin had noticed that man made constructions were regularly unpleasant, cold and unmoving. Contrasted to nature or humans themselves, which was squishy, very varied and warm.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
The monotone sound both comforted and annoyed her. She closed her eyes. Humans really liked counting time. Which made sense, their time on earth was so limited. Not even reaching a century, it seemed so very limited to her. Of course with an existence this short, and this fragile, you'd want to make every second count.
If humans lived so little, why was Heaven so indifferent to them? Wasn't it cruel to let creatures this vulnerable die, just for the sake of killing a few more demons? She remembered Brother's reaction, when she told him that no humans had been hurt in her first demon fight. Uncaring, almost scolding her for even daring to think about it.
She felt herself become slightly emotional. Sure, maybe humans didn't matter in the grand scheme of the war between Heaven and Hell, but why was everything in the universe about that? Why couldn't some angels be tasked with protecting humans, not just studying them from afar at best?
That should've been the job of Principalities. They were the only rank allowed to access all the knowledge known about humans. Even so, very little of the Principalities actually worked with humans, keeping track of big chunks of humanity, like countries. The rest were either supervisors for Units or for Heaven's other workers. She shuddered. She remembered her earlier “sleep” memory, the Principality berating her for the shoddy work. She couldn't really differentiate between all the times she had been scolded.
She sighed, and started playing with her bracelet, flipping its charms around with her other hand.
During her instruction, when she had first heard of the angelic ranks, she dreamed of becoming a Principality. She dreamed of working with humans, even though she never quite understood in which manner Principalities actually did human on angel stuff. But becoming a Principality meant centuries or millennia of flawless hard work; and even then only the best of the best were considered for the promotion.
But she was definitely the type to remain a simple angel, the lowest rank, forever. Not to mention she had never even been good at that either.
Her face began to heat up again. Thinking about Heaven made her remember the current predicament she was in.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
She sighed and looked at the clock again. One of its needles had moved, but not by much. It was weird to think of time as something that you waited eagerly to pass, rather than just a measurement for how much work you've done.
Tick. Tock.
The sound was definitely starting to grind her gears. She had to find Miku, and give herself a little excuse to no longer think about the system she was currently spitting in the face of.
“Oh, right.” The angel mumbled. She hadn't checked for demonic energy at all. She closed her eyes, and tried very hard to look for it. Nothing. She tried even harder, feeling her senses cover almost half of the building. Nothing above her, nothing to be felt. Maybe the other part of the building would've been worth checking too, but she didn't feel like doing it. She remembered what Teto said, that demons weren't really a common occurrence in the school and while she wasn't eager to believe her, she had to admit that the demon hadn't really seemed to lie to her.
She started aimlessly walking around the hallway, until she noticed that all the doors had a little window on them. Rin quickly peeked inside one classroom. Lots of teens were sitting down at small desks, looking at the teacher who was writing on a big white board of sorts. She hurriedly looked at all that she could see, but couldn't spot Miku.
She dissipated her form and went through the door. She got a good look at the back of the class too, but Miku wasn't there either.
She phased through the back wall and ended up in another classroom. Similar scene. No Miku.
Rin did this a couple more times, until she had checked all the classes in the corridor.
“Hm…Where could she be? Maybe upstairs?” She said to herself, petting one of her wings.
She let herself float upwards, like an underwater air bubble making its way towards the surface.
Another hallway, very similar to the first one. She looked through the window of the closest class to her. Miku was right there, in one of the first seats.
She felt overjoyed as she frantically started waving to her friend, which Miku obviously did not notice.
“But I thought she could see me like this?” She pouted. Rin took her physical form again, and resumed her frantic waving. This time, one of the teens did actually notice her, staring back at her in confusion. Rin awkwardly pointed towards Miku, but her friend's classmate didn't seem to get what she wanted to say.
Another student also stopped writing, awkwardly looking at her, which finally seemed to register to Miku. Her gaze met Rin's, her eyes widening in surprise.
She quickly raised her hand and asked the teacher something, then she hurriedly left her desk and came towards the door.
Before Rin could say anything, Miku quickly closed the door behind them, then dragged Rin away from her classroom, and in front of some lockers.
“You came back!” Miku said, with a quiet yet excited tone. “You didn't show up yesterday and I thought…” She drifted off.
“Oh, don't worry I was just resting!” Rin said in her usual, loud tone of voice. She was quickly shushed by Miku.
“Don't be so loud! I'm supposed to be taking a bathroom break right now. My teachers gonna hear you.”
“Sorry…When is your class over?”
Miku looked around her, searching for a clock. Her gaze found a near identical one to the clock downstairs.
“Like 30 minutes. It barely started.”
Rin felt herself deflate. Suddenly, 30 minutes felt like forever.
“And how long can you stay after you need to go to another class?”
“Well it's the lunch break so it's gonna be around an hour.”
Rin felt the energy coming back to her body. “Oh that's good!” She said, before she realised that she was being too loud again. “Sorry…” She looked away with a guilty expression, cutely twiddling her thumbs.
“But couldn't you see me earlier, when I was first waving? I thought you didn't need to see my human form now.” She continued.
Miku looked a bit surprised. “Oh so it wasn't just some light flickering! I did see something in the corner of my eye, but I was very focused on my work so I kind of dismissed it until the other kids started whispering about it. Sorry”
Miku let out a quiet giggle and looked the angel up and down.
“But like, woah, no way! You really got those shoes, ha ha!” She took a step back to get a better look at her outfit. “Those shorts are nice too, really makes the boots stand out.”
Rin giggled, doing a little twirl. “I like it too, it feels very…different!”
“Oh it sure is, but if you wanna keep on walking around here you definitely need to cover up.” Miku said with a sad sigh.
“Why?”
“The school has a pretty strict dress code. And you're definitely breaking it like so bad right now…”
“Ohh…” Rin didn't really know what to say. She had no idea why her outfit could be considered bad.
“Well why? And what's gonna happen to me? I don't study here, I don't think they can do anything.”
Miku shrugged.
“I think it's better to just pretend you're a student here though, if you just tell people that you're some rando you'll probably get kicked out.”
Rin didn't really understand why she wasn't allowed in the school and why Miku was making such a big fuss over it.
“But it's still so cool!” Miku said with admiration in her voice. She came closer to Rin, and bent down to get a better look at her shoes. Rin had never seen the top of Miku's hair before. She noticed that the beginning of her hair was a different colour than the rest, a way more natural brown.
“Why is some of your hair brown?” Rin said, struggling not to touch her scalp.
“Huh? Oh, I don't remember if I told you but my hair is this colour because I dye it, and when it grows it obviously grows back brown, not teal.” She said, self consciously touching the top of her head. She stood up again, looking down at Rin, who seemed amazed to have finally found the secret behind the human's odd hair.
She chuckled.
“Well I for one I'm glad that you're so short if it means I can be a bit sloppy with my dye work.” She said with a snort.
“I'm short?” Rin said, confused. She had never thought of herself as human and as such she didn't really spend time thinking about her height. Especially since she could change it at will too.
“Well I am above average…” Miku said with a smile. “But you're definitely short, I mean I'd be surprised if you made it over 155 (5.1ft) !”
“And how tall are you?”
“Like 167 (5.5 ft) ? I haven't checked in a while.”
“But when ...In Heaven they told us this is the average height for humans! I took it because it's important not to look very out of the ordinary, that's protocol. “
Miku laughed.
“Man, maybe 100 years ago. Or in some other country.”
Rin thought about it really hard. Protocol on human forms almost never changed, and she remembered Brother reciting the height and weight limits not too long before starting the human highschool mission. So either he had forgotten something or the records hadn't been updated in a long time.
“Well…Don't take it the wrong way, it's not that I mind. And obviously short people exist. But some people will definitely baby you, or not take you seriously.”
Rin looked at Miku again, intensely. “Why?”
The human shrugged. “I dunno, people do that kinda stuff. Guess it makes you look a bit childish and all, with the big eyes too?”
Rin gasped again.
“My eyes are big? But-”
Miku interrupted her with another shush
“They're not, like, unbelievably big but they're definitely… noticeable.” She said looking away, flustered.
“Will humans pick on me for that too?” The angel said, feeling discouraged.
“No, no. People don't really pick on your eyes, I mean I guess they can but big, blue eyes are like the beauty standard I'm pretty sure.” She looked back at Rin.
Rin felt herself becoming more and more confused.
“So wait, do I look odd to humans or not?”
“Oh definitely not. Sorry if the height comment made it seem that way. I think you look very…” Miku stopped herself. “...nice.”
Rin felt unreasonably bothered by Miku's pause.
“Just nice? Or did you mean to say something else…” She pouted, then let out a short sigh. “I'm not good at this human stuff, you'll have to help me fix my appearance.”
Miku became warmer as she started frantically looking for her words. “Well no I didn't mean to insult! You really look , like, really good. I wouldn't doubt that you were human one bit!”
Rin looked away from Miku and then back at her. She started playing with one of her hair strands.
“My form needs to attract the least attention, but look human. It needs to also be appealing so humans are inclined to help me out if I need it.”
“Well obviously it works because I dragged you away from that bully a couple days ago.” Miku said cheekily. “But if you're trying to lay low then those boots are not really doing it.” She let out a giggle.
Rin looked down at her feet.
“I guess I can ignore that part then.”
She let her back rest on a locker with a small thud.
Miku followed suit.
“But really, if you want me to look like anything…” She started playing with her bracelet again. “You know I can do it, right?”
Miku looked at her with a confused expression. “Why would I want that? You look great as is.”
Rin shrugged. “Maybe you like… other features more. I don't really care what I look like, it's fun to exercise the whole changing form thing.” She shuffled her feet.
Miku looked at her dumbfounded, her face warm.
“Well uh…obviously I'll be your friend no matter what you look like. But it's really cool that you can shapeshift. Can you change your voice too?”
Rin nodded. “Yeah, I can change anything. I can be a male too.”
The human cringed. “Oh that's so weird to think about. You're , like, so girly.” She let out a chuckle.
“Girly?”
Before Rin could ask more about what Miku had meant, a loud voice interrupted them, echoing around the hallway.
“Hatsune! What are you doing here? You should be in class!”
Rin suddenly jerked her head around. A female teacher was rapidly approaching Miku, from the opposite end of the hallway. Her loud, tall shoes made a repetitive, loud sound against the floor, which Rin was angry at herself for not noticing earlier.
The teacher came up to Miku, and looked her up and down.
“I…” Miku started talking, but was swiftly interrupted.
“Nuh uh!” The teacher looked at her angrily. “I didn't expect this from you! To be hanging out with such a…”
She glanced over to Rin, who was looking at her in a pretty relaxed fashion, still resting on the locker.
“....delinquent! What's your name, young lady?”
“Rin.” She said with a smile, seemingly not fully grasping the gravity of the situation.
“Oh, so you think this is funny? What's with those ridiculous shoes? And the shorts? Do you think this is some sort of…night club?”
Before Rin could ask what a night club is, the teacher started talking again, in the same loud tone of voice.
“Detention for both of you! No lunch break! Come with me now!”
Miku sighed as she started walking behind the teacher. Rin quickly followed suit, her footsteps blending with the sound of the teacher's loud shoes. While she didn't really intimidate her, Rin could see that she obviously had power over Miku. The thought of creating problems for her friend made her upset, much more than the idea of “detention”.
“I'm sorry if I got you into trou-” She suddenly spoke in a normal tone of voice.
“No talking!” The teacher barked at Rin, as she twisted her head around to glare at her menacingly.
“Don't worry.” Miku whispered back after the turned her attention away from Rin. “This one's on me, I should've kept better track of time.” She gave Rin a defeated smile.
Rin sighed and Miku gave Rin a small pat on the back as they kept following the teacher.