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[ragnarok97071]

There were five. Well. Five that were strictly important.

~~Matsumoto [松本] Sakurako [桜子]~~
This one you already know. The girl who seems to have some terrible luck, having almost been killed not once but twice due to magical fuckery within a remarkably short time, if nothing else. She hesitates only a moment before pushing open the door and stepping inside, knowing that she had to get control over what was happening to her, and that this was probably the best place she could go to do that. She's unremarkable, for the most part, a japanese girl among japanese girls, dark of eye and hair, basically exactly what you'd expect.

~~Nakahara [中原] Mayume [魔夢]~~
A person who, by all accounts, should not be here. A girl seemingly barely having reached high school, if that, and with a woefully inadequate figure for practicing most Keijo techniques, lacking both size and... well, size. Even so, she was here before anyone else, and of everyone here, is the only one who actually, literally wants to learn keijo because She wants to learn Keijo. Currently eagerly looking around for the sensei, trying to get a glimpse of her among the crowd of new students.

~~Shinwa [神話] Shoriko [勝利子]~~
A darker-skinned, athletic looking girl, currently standing a bit away from the rest of the group and stretching while she waits for something interesting to happen, her eyes scanning surreptitiously over the small crowd of newcomers and over the dojo itself, looking for any sign of the rumored monster-girl that ran the place. After all, she could definitely learn a thing or two from someone like that, even if it is something as outwardly silly as a sport where you decapitate training dummies with your assets.

~~Yamauchi [山内] Nadeshiko [撫子]~~
This is... yeah, this one looks like she'll fit right in... probably. Housewife-y, if you know what I mean, one of the older prospects there, but certainly built for the sport, and based on her physique, she's no stranger to training, if those muscles hidden under her soft exterior are anything to go by. She's waiting patiently, unlike most of the others, arms folded under her chest.

~~Watanabe [渡辺] Narumi [成美]~~
This one is... an odd one, it looks like, a girl who mostly just... stands there, on the very edge of the group, not drawing any attention to herself at all, just... there. A little unsettling, really. It's hard to really pick out many details about her, she looks basically like you would expect any japanese girl to look. Dark hair, a little more developed than most, but then again, she is signing up for Keijo, but otherwise entirely unremarkable.

[Chevaleresse]

Noriko just sort of stood and silently panicked for a few seconds. Fortunately, it wasn't long before her green-haired adopted brother appeared in the doorway. Noriko darted over to Kouta almost startlingly quickly, wrapping the boy up in a tight hug. It was a couple seconds before the somewhat confused boy was released alongside Noriko letting out a breath she hadn't quite realized she was holding. He thought about questioning her for a moment, but the action wasn't quite strange enough to occasion a comment from the quiet middle schooler. They exchanged their usual conversation, though Noriko seemed distracted through the whole thing; how was your day? Homework? Did you eat? Good, yes, yes, et cetera. She let him get to his work, and scanned the room visually before she ducked out into the hallway.

There, Noriko waited for a moment, trying to get a handle on it. She'd just been thinking about that sort of thing, trying to convince herself she was paranoid for even thinking something like that could happen. . . and then she gets a call from Enn over the intercom telling her that no, one of her classmates did in fact get grabbed off the street and pumped full of God knows what until she nearly died. There had to be something she could do about that, right? She couldn't just pull him out of school, as much as she wanted to; he needed to go. And watching over him would be a full time job, and impractical besides. Maybe bodyguards. . .? "Enn, you still listening? You wanted to talk about salary, right?"

[Empiricist]

Noriko
No response. Audio sensors are off again. Looks like you'll have to ping her with you communicator.

[Chevaleresse]

Noriko did so, waiting for a moment so the AI could finish whatever it was she was doing. Another time, she might've wondered if the AI could even get distracted like that, but right now she had far too much on her mind. "Okay. You wanted to talk about salary, right?"

[Empiricist]

Noriko
With a flicker, Enn and Winter's avatars appear.
"Yes, we've filled out all the paperwork and you will begin receiving it soon, but there are a few decisions you will need to make first. Don't worry, they're not set in stone, you can always change them later."
"Long story short, most funding for all this Godslayer work comes from outside other realms and the like. As there is no way to convert the currency directly in a way that is recognized by the mundane world, we have to take a different route to get it into mundane currencies and over to Godslayers."

A bar chart appears next to Winter, split between two categories - "Local Currency" and "Off-Realm Account". The relative sizes of the two sectors begin to shift with a list of options at the side shifting as well as the proportions change.

"Think about it this way, you have an off-realm account we pay you with, and you can ask us to convert an elected percentage of that into money you can actually spend here. The conversion's one way and there's a bit of depreciation involved due to the processes involved. What we need you to decide is what you want that percentage to be."
"Having some money in your off-realm account is helpful since you can spent it if you travel to other realms, and you can use it to order and buy stuff from them, it's like online shopping. But, it's not money you can use to spend on things in this world directly."
"And on the flip side, for larger percentages of local currency, the payment processes get more involved. For instance, we could put you down as an employee of an Awakened business such as Kumon Group and route the money through to you as your salary. It's not a an issue for people who do it full-time or as a student, but it'd look extremely suspicious for the people who  already have full-time day jobs. Point is, there's merit to both currencies."
"Oh and um, you get payed slightly more if you choose longer payment intervals, like yearly rather than weekly. We'll still give you a starting lump sum to cover time until your first paycheck though."
"And that's the other variable, payment intervals. Again, you can change it later on to better suit you Anyway, here's your total income prior to any conversion losses and estimated as yen, assuming weekly payments."

A number pops up next to Winter. Well, you're not suddenly rich, but it's definitely a lot more than what the maid cafe's paying you.

" Sorry, it's a bit overwhelming I know, we can give you some more time to think about it and maybe discuss with Kouta or your teammates if you wish."

[Chevaleresse]

Off-realm. She was pretty sure she'd heard something about other worlds, and at this point it wasn't really shocking. She couldn't foresee THAT much usage of that currency, unless there was something she could get for Kouta, some kind of ward, maybe some sort of Regalia that non-Awakened could use. "I could do bi-monthly, I still have the cafe job to get me through the rest of the time. . . I'll have to think about the rest, though." There had to be something she could do. "Say, uh, do you know if there's any protective wards or something you can buy for non-Awakened people? Or maybe even a way to get one of them powers safely, though I know that's probably not the most likely thing. . ."

[Empiricist]

Noriko
"Wards and the like do not work here on Earth unless you are Awakened or have an external source of spirit energy, like a leyline or godforged regalia. There are however groups, including Tsukasa and Minato's, that seek to find ways to bypass this limitation and/or to safely induce awakening in people. I believe there's currently a pilot study seeking to install fae augments into terminally ill patients to try and force an Awakening."

[Powder Miner]

Faith sniffled, and then let out a long, soft sigh. "I think I'm going to just... stay inside for a while, unless I'm really needed. Don't wanna go out and have anything else happen for a while... anything else at all. It's already too much. I just-- I just-- I need a break from everything."

[Chevaleresse]

Noriko's face, though still creased with concern, lit up with curiosity at that last. "Why only terminally ill patients?" Guarded curiosity. She could guess why. . . but it could be better than it sounded, and it was a way to let Kouta protect himself. It wouldn't exactly get him a normal life, but the ship had already sailed on that long before Noriko even met him.

[Empiricist]

Noriko
"I've a feeling we both know the reason - the risk to reward ratio is more favorable. They have everything to gain and comparatively little to lose. Mind you, faetech has an excellent installation record, so fatalities are not something we expect. That being said, these augments are biological in nature, meaning they could cause all kind of trouble if they fail to activate. Imagine going to a doctor afterwards, they might think you have a tree growing out of your flesh or that you have some peculiar tumor, there's no mundane analogue for what they're doing. They could of course recommend an Awakened doctor to look after subjects after the procedure, but there's no way to ensure they stick with them, and a patient having a failed procedure and then being misdiagnosed later on brings up all manner of ethical concerns. Plus it is easier to explain and recruit for an experiment treatment, versus an attempt to give people superpowers."

[IamanElfCollaborator]

"That's.....fair. Do you.....need some space?"

[Powder Miner]

Faith sighed and just let her head lay on Minato's lap, speaking after a few moments. "I wouldn't mind if you stayed for a while, Minato. This is nice, at least..." She sighed, again, and wrapped her arms around Minato, snuggling into him, and staying silent for a few moments. "Thanks for always being here for me, Minato," Her voice wasn't exactly full of energy, but it did seem to be quietly sincere, "it really does mean a lot, you know."

"...also, there's a thing of ice cream in the freezer in here, I'm sorry but could you get it for me? It would be nice to have something nice to eat..."

[IamanElfCollaborator]

Minato obliges, standing up for a moment (after carefully laying her head down somewhere comfortable) and grabs the ice cream.

Something stood out to Minato, though, after he came back. He was tired, after all; he wasn't the type to let it show normally, but then again, what Minato and the others had to do, most athletes would probably struggle through, and as fit as Minato was, he was no athlete.
".....what did you mean by that? Easier over here, I mean?"

[Powder Miner]

By the time Minato started speaking, Faith had begun tucking into the ice cream (chocolate fudge) with somewhat alarming alacrity, eating from the goddamned tub itself on the spot. When he did speak, though, the blonde girl froze for a few moments, the spoon still stuck in her mouth -- it would have probably been quite cute, actually, but her expression was one of the deer caught in the headlights. Eventually, though, she sighed and looked down, putting down the spoon (for now). "Oh... you remembered that. I... ...um, <damn.> I don't want to get into specifics right now but things back home, uh, in America are... difficult. And I guess I just, I just really wanted them not to be difficult here. B-but..."

[IamanElfCollaborator]

"Difficult? How difficult?"