Mirai ‘Shikage’ ZanbaruThings had been oddly peaceful for the past few months following Mana Academy’s third demon attack in two consecutive school years, and for the first time in a long while Mirai’s study was quiet while she pored over the meticulously organized documents on her desk, with dull sunlight streaming from the curtained windows and onto the bleached white pages. Against the black marble walls, scarlet decor, and soft glow of the room’s fireplace stood out her pale face and deep azure eyes, the few traits that she seemed to share with Ruta and all the other Jaegars the Academy had yet seen. Her tired gaze wandered over the words printed on the papers, where there were more sections redacted and blacked out than left intact, as it had for the last half hour she had spent committing them to memory, but by now she had ceased to consciously read the remnants and had more simply began looking at the pages. Weary and losing herself in thought for but a moment, the quiet crackling of flames just behind her reminded herself what needed to be done.
Before her lay a number of what essentially amounted to a small collection of censored documents and condemnations of memory, born from student files, personnel files, and clever forgeries of both the aforementioned. The discovery of certain non-humans on the island, notably the arrival of two homunculi right under the previous administration’s nose, and a demonic possession by one particularly troubled individual within the student body had prompted the erasure of these dangerous individuals from the Academy’s records by the school board and the increasingly nervous Noblebloods that sat thereupon. Among those damned to fade from memory were a redhead Aquo girl, an olive skinned Solum boy, a messy haired Ignis girl, and a strange white haired woman with a face practically identical to the Aquo girl. Having gone through their records only once before this point, Mirai still remembered the status of each. Two unconfirmed dead, one sent away in a straitjacket post-possession, and one still missing and likely to turn up dead within the next few months. She felt something akin to pity looking upon their old faces, knowing that after today their names would be scarcely spoken, let alone remembered. Nevertheless, Mirai was not quite one for sentiment or sympathy. After all, such things were at best fleeting and impermanent, never warranting anything more than a moment of attention, and were at worst a weakness and a distraction that tended to get people in her position killed.
The Jaegarin had been introduced to this school in the midst of a chaotic frenzy of blades, black blood, hellfire, and paranoia that she would have been quite accustomed to outside of this little island, but as time went on and she took her place here as the acting head of the Academy, peace had somehow set in not long afterwards. Mirai was not terribly used to such an idea, not after her long and bloody tenure with the Brotherhood’s German Chapter where she seemed to talk with the dead more often than the living. Fortunately, however, she had been able to adjust and apply herself to the less fatal tasks required of her at Mana that came with her appointment by the Accord. The administrative responsibilities of Headmaster were dull, as was to be expected, but Mirai had to some extent come to enjoy that aspect of the job, viewing it as almost therapeutic in comparison to her typical work, though owing mostly to habit she still performed the typical tasks of a Jaegar. When her daytime duties were over and all matters accounted for and satisfactorily resolved, Mirai conducted nightly patrols just as Ruta had, roaming the halls and the school grounds for things that went bump in the night. This had given some of the students some degree of comfort and feeling of normalcy, given that she had striven to continue the work of her predecessor, but even so, she had not been able to truly replace him.
Yet even without Ruta, the days had come and gone since the last incident, and new events unfolded as they always had. Ruta had been recalled by the Brotherhood, The Great Houses of Europe from France to Italy to Britain were at each others throats even worse than the months before, and the Quarterly Exams were already upon the students of the Academy. Mirai supposed that it would either be necessary or at the very least interesting to oversee the tests and observe how far (or more likely how little) the students had come in their studies. Between the mild claustrophobia she was experiencing from having been shut in this room for the past few hours and her own growing restlessness she had wanted the chance to do so earlier, but as a
Friedensjaegar, Mirai was also not one to leave a task undone.
Rising slowly from her seat and gathering up the few remaining files on her desk, those last archival traces of the individuals within the walls of this academy, Mirai cast them into the flames and watched the embers scatter. With the new arrival, the dull blaze burned just the slightest bit brighter as the crisp white those pages had held just moments ago were melted into a charred black, the edges searing as they slowly crumpled inward and turned to ash. A waste to be sure, but orders were orders, and both the Brotherhood and the Noblebloods funding this Academy had ordered the destruction of any and all traces of those individuals and all those like them. The memories of these people might still have been fresh in the minds of the faculty and for the moment the students, but all things that went unrecorded faded from history without fail. Without repetition or reminder, that was simply the way of memories in this world, and nothing could change that.
Mirai held those thoughts in mind for a moment, reflecting until she saw the last remnants of white was swallowed and tarnished by the blaze. With a wave of her hand and the gust of bone chilling air that came after, the flames died out, and the job was done. Mirai went back to her desk, checked to sure that nothing was out of order before she left, and went out the door and into the gray marble corridors she had become so familiar with in these past months, now empty during the exam period. Clad in a
hooded black dress, plain leggings, and leather boots, she looked remarkably more casual than when she had first set foot on the island wearing military fatigues and jackboots, but the ivory saber hilt and ebon scabbard hanging from her belt signified perfectly well that her purpose here had not changed, something both the students and faculty had not forgotten. With a steady pace, Mirai made her exit from the school building and went out into the outdoors.
The weather in the courtyard was clear, the wind was brisk, and as it always seemed to be in the months preceding spring, the endless skies were dull and gray. Mildly unwelcoming as it was though, Mirai had a small smile on her face when she finally got her first breath of fresh air, feeling refreshed after having holed herself up in the Headmaster’s room for so long. She liked the feeling of the wind going through her hair and feel the grass beneath her feet as she walked on it, but she knew that she would have time to indulge in such frivolous things later. The sounds of magical combat, among them bellowing flames, shattering ice, and clashing metal a short distance away had meant that the final part of the Quarterly Examinations was underway, and that she wouldn’t need to go terribly far to make a late entrance if she so wished. With that in mind, the Jaegarin set off towards the sounds of combat, blade bobbing at her side in the wind.
It didn’t take Mirai very long to spot where the main battlefield was, or the makeshift café that Miss Stradt had set up alongside it, for that matter. While somewhat disappointed that she wasn’t able to see the fighting when it started, she was at least content to watch and see how well the students would be apply their theoretical knowledge of magic and their own unique abilities in a practical setting. Approaching from the sidelines and staying under the shade the island’s oak trees provided, the Jaegarin merely leaned against the nearest tree trunk and watched from a short but safe distance as the duels continued on, her black form and piercing blue eyes going unseen as nearly everyone kept their attention on either the fights or the food being provided by Miss Stradt’s familiars. Whether or not she was going to be noticed or approached herself, she cared little, merely taking mental notes of particularly notable students as events continued to unfold.