I found out the next day that school would be closed until further notice.
Nice.
The school needed to do some structural checks. Yea, that was the reason.
The collapse was definitely not because of a fight between two superhumans. Nope.
Jokes aside, that meant that I could spend as much time as I wanted preparing, training and getting ready some more adaptations.
Raiden Mei, despite her… lacklustre performance, was still a very real and significant threat.
Control over electromagnetism was no joke.
Plus, she was clearly lacking greatly in Honkai energy during the battle, which played a pretty big part in my victory.
If she were to get a bit more creative with her powers, as well as get more energy powering her, I shudder to think of what type of nonsense she can pull out.
As for the pulse, I could not track it down yesterday since it had already disappeared by the time the school building collapsed.
Unfortunately for me, I did not have the great luck of meeting an idiot who would bring the source straight to me again.
One week turned into two. Then three. The school still hadn't reopened.
And that was obviously felt magnificent.
Kiana started dropping by more and more. Sometimes with snacks, sometimes with new games, sometimes just to bug me.
Sometimes, I felt like just slamming the door, but in the end, I still relented to her appearances.
These days, it wasn't weird to find her already camped out on my sofa before I even walked in.
"Gojo, pass the chips."
"Why are you here again, Kiana?"
"Your house has all the new games!."
"I know... and?"
"It's a nice place to hang out!" Kiana said as she played on my Playsta-Homustation.
I forgot that almost everything is Homu-related here.
Anyways, she was playing Mortal Kombat, and she wasn't that bad at it to be honest, a stark contrast to her skills in MOBAs.
I sat down next to her on my sofa. "Don't you have a part-time job to do? How do you have so much time here?"
"I gave up working part-time." Kiana sulked. "I think the news about my uniform that time got spread out."
"Then how're you getting cash?"
"My stinky dad's credit card."
"Huh?"
"He left it for me before he went poof. I didn't really want to use it much but..." Kiana said before she paused. Her tone had dropped off at the end for a split second. Quieter, almost thoughtful.
For a moment, it let me see a different side of the Kiana Kaslana that I had been with everyday.
Then her eyes widened suddenly, like a switch flipped.
"Wait... didn't you say you saw my stinky dad that day?"
"So now you remember?" I deadpanned.
"Hehe."
At that, Kiana jumped up to her feet as she placed the controller down. "I need to start looking now. Who knows when he'll leave the country!"
"Kiana... I last saw the guy like, a month and a half ago. He could be in America by now for all we know."
"That doesn't matter. I've been looking throughout the world for him even though I don't know where he is." She pumped her fist. "This is the biggest clue since like... ever!"
"Ok... if you say so..."
Kiana was still unperturbed as she turned to me. "Gojo, can you help me search for dad too?"
I raised an eyebrow. "Why?"
"Cuz you're my friend!"
Huh...
Not gonna lie, I was not too interested in going along with her. I really did have a lot of things that I could be doing instead, but...
Looking at Kiana's hopeful expression, I sighed.
Well, Siegfried might know a lot more stuff about Honkai than Kiana. If he was actually amiable, I would probably be able to get some information out of him about the Honkai device and Mei's situation?
But that was on the off-chance that we could find him though.
Plus, she did help me, although indirectly, in getting contact with Honkai...
In the end, I just gave an ultimatum. "We'll just look at that one area. No more okay?"
Kiana's face gleamed. "Nice! We'll put some posters too!"
"We'll put some posters too..."
------------------------------------------------------------------
"Good morning Gojo-san, Kiana-chan."
When I expected to go out to help Kiana, I really did not expect Raiden Mei to be there, waiting at the area too.
By this time, her arm looked already healed, seeing that there was no longer any bruising or swelling around her arm.
And also, Kiana... chan?
When did they get that close? Over the holidays?
"Mei-senpai! You're here!" Kiana shouted excitedly. "That's great. We'll definitely find him this time."
I sincerely doubt that Kiana.
I didn't want to be the killer of the mood though, so I greeted Mei back. "Good morning Raiden-senpai. What are you doing here?"
(A/N: I'll cut out the honourifics for now. If you guys like the honourifics, I'll add them back though.)
"Kiana did not tell you?" Mei inquired.
"Nope."
"I messaged Mei on Homugram! She said she wanted to help out when I told her about what we were doing."
Mei smiled. "I wanted to thank the both of you for saving my life. This is the least that I could do."
Hearing this, my eyes narrowed imperceptibly.
She... was not lying... but she was not telling the complete truth either. I don't have enough info yet to make any conclusions though.
"So can I know how the person we're finding looks like?" Mei spoke at this time.
"A guy with white hair and blue eyes! He's pretty tall too!"
"The same as the both of you right?"
"Yup! Gojo, where are the posters!! Let's start posting them around!"
"I don't know if it's even legal to randomly paste posters like that Kiana..."
"That's fine. The cops won't know it's us! The cops will probably try to hunt down my dad instead." An evil chuckle emerged from her throat. "That'll teach him to leave me like that."
I shrugged. "Sure. It's your phone number on there anyways."
Kiana's huge grin froze.
"W-we can fix them later." Kiana coughed. "Let's just start looking."
Mei let out an awkward chuckle.
I groaned.
This was going to be a very long day.
(A/N: What do you guys think of this chapter? Please give me some criticism so I know what to improve on. If you liked the chapter, please give me some powerstones)