"Hold it, hold it! I'm one of your own, little sister! Don't get worked up!" 'Fu Hua' raised both 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. She was not particularly tall, but she stood very straight. Carefully styled side-swept bangs covered her left eye, leaving only a bright green right eye gleaming with a cunning light.
"One of our own?!" Xina coldly watched the smiling woman before her, already able to determine her identity from her tone and actions.
But... having been given such a fright, she had no intention of letting this A-Rank Valkyrie go so easily...
"One of our own? Where's the proof? You need to provide proof of who you are! If I believed everything you said, wouldn't that make me look foolish?" Xina rolled her eyes and deliberately spoke in a cold, quiet voice.
"Proof... Theresa knows me. If you don't believe me, you can call Theresa!" Warith gestured toward the communicator in Xina's pocket, apparently intending to leave the matter of verifying her identity to Theresa.
"Tch." Xina pursed her lips, silently dialed Theresa's communicator number, and handed the communicator to the woman before her.
Beep, beep, beep...
After a brief tone, Theresa's voice came through the communicator. "Hello, Xina. Did you pick her up?"
"Oh my, Principal Theresa! I'm Warith. I've got a little misunderstanding with the young lady from your academy right now. Could you ask her to put away her weapon?" Warith took the communicator and hurriedly complained to Theresa on the other end. "The girl you sent is way too alert. She pulls out a weapon at the slightest disagreement..."
"Did you disguise yourself again to tease the poor girl? Otherwise, why would she fight you? If you hadn't teased her, I wouldn't believe Xina would draw her weapon right away."
Far away at St. Freya, Theresa put down the comic book in her hands and immediately hit on the root of the problem.
"Th-this... Sigh! Anyway, I've fallen into this girl's hands today... Just have her let me go first!" Warith sighed helplessly, conceding defeat.
"That's more like it!" Theresa replied proudly, then said to Xina, who was holding back a laugh beside Warith, "Xina, are you there? She's one of us, not a bad person. Let her go!"
"Okay!" Xina answered, then released the whip in her hand.
Once the barbed whip was removed from her neck, Warith returned to her usual self. She stepped closer and hooked an elbow around Xina's neck, her eyes full of curiosity.
"Little sister, how did you notice something was wrong? Was my disguise not convincing enough? That shouldn't be possible! I even concealed my scent."
"Tell your big sister, okay?"
"Instinct." Xina rolled her eyes, her answer terrifyingly concise.
"Instinct... Tch! I was exposed because of something like that..." Warith clicked her tongue and sighed helplessly, resting most of her weight on Xina's shoulder.
"Hiss..." Struggling to breathe under the pressure, Xina unhappily looked at the woman with an arm draped over her shoulder. "It's getting late. I have class this afternoon. Aren't you leaving?"
"Oh dear... You were so rough earlier that you messed up my makeup." Warith withdrew her hand from Xina's shoulder, somehow pulled out a compact of foundation from one of her pockets, and stepped back a few paces. "Let me take some time to touch up my makeup. You don't mind, do you?"
"I don't." Without even turning her head, Xina simply stared blankly at the distant gate.
In her view, how long could touching up makeup possibly take? Waiting a little was no big deal.
"Mm, this should do it." Warith looked at herself in the mirror and nodded in satisfaction.
Then she took a step forward, gently pushed Xina's back, and teased her in Himeko's voice, "Student Xina, you were very rude to your teacher just now!"
"Huh?!"
Hearing Himeko's voice inexplicably appear behind her, Xina instinctively turned around, only to see 'Himeko's' face already pressing close.
"You..." Xina took a step back, and the long whip that had just been coiled and hung up was flung out again.
It was as if she intended to give Warith a thorough lashing with that whip unless she gave a proper explanation today.
"Just as expected of Himeko's student! That temper is exactly the same... Put down the whip, and we can talk this out!"
Looking at the whip that could fly at her at any moment, Warith raised both hands again, afraid that this bad-tempered miss before her would truly whip her fiercely.
She was not some tough combatant with impressive defensive strength.
Snap!
Xina lightly cracked the whip and impatiently urged, "We only met for the first time today. What could we possibly have to talk about? The biggest help you can give me right now is to come with me obediently and not cause trouble for my first mission, understand?"
"Then do you want to hear some gossip about your Teacher Himeko when she was younger?"
"Teacher Himeko's... gossip?" Xina's expression stiffened, then she quickly accepted it.
This seemingly weak intelligence division Valkyrie dealt in intelligence. Knowing some gossip was perfectly normal and nothing strange.
"That's right. Do you want to know about Teacher Himeko's youthful romances and scandals, or do you want to know the secret of Principal Theresa's age? As long as you want to know, I can tell you!"
As soon as she finished speaking, Warith transformed again, becoming Theresa. Even her originally fitted custom-made clothes became baggy as her body shrank.
"Look, look, your principal has grown a huge pair of ()!" Warith snickered and enlarged a certain part of her body several times over.
"That's enough... If you keep wasting my nap time here, I'll tie you up and drag you back!" With black lines practically hanging over her head, Xina covered her face in embarrassment and peered through her fingers at the clown before her, feeling rather amazed.
The A-Rank Valkyries she had met before, such as Himeko and Fu Hua, had all been dependable and steady types.
Why was this A-Rank Valkyrie she met today like this?
"Tch, after talking for so long and performing so many transformations, are you seriously not even a little interested in my amazing transformation skills?" Warith glared indignantly at Xina, who only wanted to go back for her afternoon nap, and could not help complaining, "I thought that since we were both survivors of the Singapore Honkai disaster, we'd have plenty to talk about! Who knew... Hmph!"
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