The Nonsensical A-Rank Valkyrie

"Stop, stop—big sister here is on your side! Little miss, please don't get worked up!" 'Fu Hua' raised her hands to show she meant no harm, then slowly wiped away the disguise on her face, revealing her true appearance.

She was a black-haired woman with a high ponytail. Not particularly tall but very straight-backed, her carefully styled side-swept bangs covering her left eye, leaving only a single green right eye glinting with a sly, clever light.

"On my side?!" Xina stared coldly at the woman beaming before her, already able to confirm her identity from her tone and movements.

But... having been thoroughly startled, she wasn't about to let this A-Rank Valkyrie off so easily...

"On my side? Where's the proof? You need to show me proof! If I just believed everything you said, wouldn't that make me look like an idiot?" Xina's eyes darted around as she deliberately put on a cold face and spoke softly.

"Proof... Theresa knows me. If you don't believe me, you can call Theresa!" The operative codenamed Warith nodded toward the communicator in Xina's pocket, as if she wanted to leave the identity verification to Theresa.

"Tch~" Xina pursed her lips, silently dialed Theresa's communicator number, and handed the device to the woman in front of her.

Beep, beep, beep...

After a short tone, Theresa's voice came through the communicator: "Hey, Xina, did you pick up the person?"

"Oh dear, Principal Theresa! It's Warith. I've got a little misunderstanding with the girl from your academy—could you tell her to put her weapon away?" Warith grabbed the communicator and hurriedly complained to Theresa on the other end: "The girl you sent has way too much vigilance—she pulled a weapon on me without a word..."

"Did you just disguise yourself and tease that little girl again? Otherwise, why would she fight you? If you hadn't been messing with her, I don't believe Xina would have just drawn her weapon."

Far away at St. Freya, Theresa put down her comic book and immediately pinpointed the problem.

"This... ah! Anyway, I've met my match in this girl today... Could you just tell her to let me go?" Warith let out a helpless, wry sigh, effectively conceding.

"That's more like it!" Theresa replied proudly, then spoke to the snickering Xina beside her: "Xina, are you there? She's one of us, not an enemy. Let her go!"

"Oh!" Xina responded, then loosened the whip in her hand.

Once the barbed whip was removed from her neck, Warith returned to her usual state. She stepped forward, hooked her elbow around Xina's neck, and looked at her with amazement:

"Little miss, how did you figure out something was off? Was my disguise not good enough? That can't be—I even masked my scent."

"Little miss, tell big sister, okay?"

"Intuition!" Xina rolled her eyes, her answer terrifyingly concise.

"Intuition... Tch! I got exposed by something like that..." Warith clicked her tongue, sighed with some resignation, and let most of her body weight slump onto Xina's shoulder.

"Hiss..." Gasping for breath under the pressure, Xina shot an annoyed look at the woman who had her arm draped over her shoulder: "It's getting late. I have class this afternoon. Aren't you leaving yet?"

"Ah... you were so rough earlier, you scratched up the makeup on my face." Warith let go of Xina's shoulder, pulled a compact foundation from some pocket, and stepped back a few paces: "Let me take a moment to touch up my makeup—you don't mind, do you?"

"I don't mind." Xina didn't even turn her head, just stared blankly at the distant gate.

In her mind, how long could fixing makeup take? She could wait a bit!

"Mhm, that's good." Warith looked at herself in the mirror and nodded in satisfaction.

Then she took a step forward, gently pushed Xina's back with her hand, and teased in Himeko's voice: "Student Xina, you were very rude to your teacher just now!"

"Huh?!"

Hearing Himeko's voice suddenly behind her, Xina instinctively spun around, only to see 'Himeko's' face already right up close.

"You..." Xina stepped back, and the long whip she had just coiled and hung was whipped out again.

She looked ready to give Warith a thorough lashing with that whip if she didn't get an explanation today.

"Truly Himeko's student! That fiery temper is exactly the same... Put the whip down, let's talk this out!"

Seeing the long whip that could fly at any moment, Warith raised her hands yet again, terrified that this bad-tempered miss would really take that whip and give her a good beating.

She wasn't some thick-skinned combatant with impressive defenses.

Crack!

Xina gave the whip a light flick and urged impatiently: "This is our first meeting today—what is there to talk about? The biggest help you can give me right now is to follow me obediently and not cause trouble for my first mission, got it?"

"Then do you want to hear some gossip about your Teacher Himeko from when she was young?"

"Teacher Himeko's... gossip?" Xina's expression stiffened, then relaxed again.

This seemingly very weak Valkyrie from the Intelligence Department, being an intelligence operative, knowing some gossip was perfectly normal—nothing strange about it.

"That's right. Do you want to know about your Teacher Himeko's romantic scandals from her younger days, or do you want to know Principal Theresa's age secret? If you want to know, I can tell you all of it!"

With that, Warith transformed again, this time into Theresa's likeness, and even the originally well-fitted custom clothes became baggy as her body shrank.

"Look, look—your principal has grown a huge pair~" Warith chuckled, puffing up a certain area several times its size.

"That's enough... If you waste any more of my afternoon nap time, I'll tie you up and drag you back!" Xina, covered in black lines, couldn't bear to look and covered her face, peeking through her fingers at this lively character before her, momentarily a bit amazed.

Every A-Rank Valkyrie she'd met before—like Himeko, like Fu Hua—had been reliable and steady types.

Why was this A-Rank Valkyrie like this?

"Tch, after all that talking and performing, don't you have any interest at all in my amazing transformation skills?" Warith pouted angrily at Xina, who was fixated on going back for her nap, and couldn't help complaining: "I thought that since we're both survivors of the Singapore Honkai disaster, we'd have a lot in common! Who knew? Hmph!"