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Feral wished she had entered the room holding the remains of her assignment behind her back rather than on full display, but she could hardly move them now that her teacher was looking directly at her. Hiding them would not only make her look guilty (and weak, and childish, and not remotely hero-material) but wouldn’t even serve a purpose because it had already been seen. Seen, assessed, and judged, no doubt. She could tell that Ms. Kawaha was worried, but the sound of metal fragments trickling to the ground had Feral even more on edge. She didn’t know just what worried the teacher, and there were both helpful and dangerous options available for that, and some of the outcomes were maybe okay but some of them were worst-case.

Entirely possible worst cases.

Feral swallowed, ears low and tucked back along her head even if it lost so much of her height. She stepped in further when prompted, and knew the way to this particular teacher’s desk, and if she walked more on her toes than usual she did at least keep her heels close to the ground. Maybe it came across as trying to keep from tracking mud in. Maybe it just made her seem more like an animal. Maybe she should be more like an animal. It made so much more sense so much of the time. Animals didn’t drink tea, though. Mostly. Kai liked cold tea, especially if it was sweet. She liked warm tea, mostly, and nodded to the teacher’s offer.

She should try to explain. Try to avoid the worst case options. ”It wasn’t my pack,” she blurted, though soft spoken. ”They said to say my dog ate it but that’s not true and I just - I didn’t have time to do it again and also all the questions were on it and I don’t remember all of them and I- I didn’t know what else to do so I just...... came anyway.”. She trailed off, muddied hands slowly sinking lower. She was not making this any better. She was just making excuses.

It was not a good day.

Oh, it had started out well enough, if not delightful.  The sun was out but it wasn’t too hot, and while it looked like it might rain again later, she expected to be indoors, perhaps sprawled in the sun in a pile of fur since her assignment was done, and trying to finish it had been the hardest thing she’d done all month; she’d had to actually ask for an extra day to finish it all.

She’d left her dorm alone, the pack more interested in that patch of sun, and dodged puddles on the way to the main school building.  The assignment was rolled up in one hand, nice and neat to protect it as she went to hand it in, but when a much larger student went out of his way to shoulder past her - despite her sideways dodge - it fluttered open, pages gradually settling into puddles and stretches of mud alongside the path.

Feral herself managed to land her spin in a crouch, both hands deep in muddy grass, tail bristling and bones aching, but her annoyance faded into horror when the other student, and one of the two others with him, stopped, turned, and ground his muddy shoe into the nearest of the pages of her assignment.  One of his friends jumped onto another patch, and when Feral started to so much as lean towards them, to try to save her papers, the third loomed overhead.

All she really knew about the trio was that they weren’t hero course, and they were older than her by at least a year, and they didn’t think she should be there.  That she couldn’t be a hero.  And that if the school couldn’t see that, then they would take it upon themselves to reveal it.  She couldn’t do anything back to them; attacking them would be even more likely to get her expelled, and she wasn’t so confident in her physical strength against this particular group, non-hero-stream or not, when she was alone.  And whenever she tried to talk to them, they just laughed and made more fun of her and tried to taunt her into attacking, since she apparently talked like an animal and animals dealt with things with their teeth.

She ground those teeth together now, unable to speak, unable to save her papers while they stood on them, unable to just leave and have nothing at all to hand in, unable to do anything to the people responsible, while they laughed and stomped and loomed, and then the main student leaned down to pick up the papers.  Confused but still unmoving, crouched in the mud like an animal, Feral watched as he gathered up all the sheets, stacking them mostly neatly but probably not in order, and then moved toward Feral.  Her tail stiffened even more as he approached, but she slowly stood, mud dripping from her hands.

He stopped just outside of arm’s reach, and then ripped the wet, muddy paper apart.  He tossed the shreds into the air, and then finally left, still laughing.  A few feet away, he paused, and looked back.  “Just say your dog ate your homework,” he suggested, and then left with his friends.  Left Feral to crouch again and collect the fragments, try to clean off the mud with her muddy hands, and trudge back onto the path toward her original destination.  She was still trying to decide what she would do next when she found herself inside, tracking mud across the just-cleaned floors, and then at the entrance to the teacher’s lounge, and then her teacher was directly in front of her and she still couldn’t speak, just stand there with muddy hands and bare feet (although the latter wasn’t new), holding the piled, sticky mess of paper scraps and mud smears.

Feral’s oversized ears caught Hanako’s quiet voice well enough that the lack of volume barely registered, and she slipped forward until she was almost, but not quite, within arm’s reach of Hanako and the rabbit cage. She watched the interaction with intent curiosity, ears twitching slightly as she tried to discern if Hanako could also communicate with her pack-rabbit. If they were both rabbits, then it made complete sense to Feral that they would be able to communicate, but she had also learned that most people could not communicate with animals, and certainly not in even limited words. But she kind of always hoped to encounter someone else who did, and so she had to assess this time.

Crow was not nearly so alert, though he had perked up as they re-approached the rabbit smell, and now his nose worked and his whiskers twitched from his secure space in Feral’s arms. When he saw the rabbit properly, his eyes widened, ears coming to attention, and he just staaaaaaaared.

Feral wasn’t much more subtle, although rather than going still her tail full-on wagged behind her where she crouched. It didn’t have quite enough force to knock her off balance, but it was a good thing that there was plenty of space behind her, or the visit might have been interrupted by injury after all. The rabbit was just so... so... fluffy. How could something so small be so fluffy? And those ears were so strange. The pictures of rabbits she’d seen before didn’t do any of it justice. Especially the fluffiness. Her fingers twitched in Crow’s silky fur, aching to feel the rabbit fur and compare it. She quickly looked up to Hanako’s face, eyes bright and innocently excited, then back to the rabbit, then back to Hanako. Her tail moved a bit faster. She glanced down at at Crow. Oh! Was this how people introduced their pack? Or at least how Hanako did it? She didn’t usually think about how old Crow was, or any of them. Numbers were a thing usually reserved for money and math classes.

”Yuki is very fluffy,” she agreed solemnly despite the tail still wagging behind her. ”Erm. Crow is. About.”. Wait, she could figure this out. Kai was a couple years old. Three summers? Three. And he was about as old now as Crow had been when Kai had joined the pack. So that would make him.... ”Six! They’re almost the same age!”. She paused, a new thought occurring. ”How old do rabbits get? If Crow were human he’d be... I think in his 20s? But he’s not exactly especially smart, so if it weren’t for pack he’d probably never have made it this long.”. Feral was only slightly intentional about the stretched-out description; longer sentences made it less likely that Crow would understand and take offence. She needn’t‘ve worried, though, because he was much too focused on Yuki.

Slowly, slowly, slowly, Feral lowered Crow to the floor, glancing up at Hanako so that she could reclaim the cat at the slightest sign of worry or disapproval. Crow behaved himself admirably, though, and only leaned forward a bit, nose working again with curiosity.

Hanako’s confusion quickly reminded Feral that most people didn’t use the termpack, especially in relation to the members of their family. It wouldn’t stop her from using it, though, because that was what they were, but she had forgotten that it might confuse some other people. There was too much going on. She was too stressed out.

There didn’t seem to be any lingering reasons to be so stressed, though. Was there? Crow was under control, and not actively trying to misbehave more. No damage had been done. She was... kind of... conversing with Hanako, who was also stressed out, but was maybe calming down. No obvious signs that there was any impending doom or threat. Right?

So.

Deep breath in. Slow breath out. Process the idea of a rabbit, up until now a mythical creature of advertisements and artwork, getting into trouble. Deep breath in. Slow breath out. Now she felt more tired than stressed, as her muscles finally relaxed properly and realized how stiff they had been. The reduced stress even made it easier to take note of the little movements Hanako was making, the rabbit girl shaking her head and twisting her hand. Fighting fear?

...

...

...

Of her? Also:

See Yuki the rabbit that was not also a person, probably with a rabbit quirk, but was an actual animal rabbit?

Feral warred with processing the realization that Hanako was probably afraid of her and restraining the excitement at the thought of meeting such a rare and strange creature, the latter winning out until she took a half step forward and she remembered that her arms were full of cat. She paused. How should she make this work? She wanted to see the rabbit. She did not want to scare Hanako. Scared people could be dangerous, but also Feral only wanted bad people to be afraid of her. A neighbour here meant that Hanako was also a UA student and therefore trying to be a hero, which made her a not-bad person, a good person. At least partially. So Feral didn’t want her to be afraid of her. And she didn’t want Crow to make trouble for her.

Her ears shot up as a solution presented itself. ”Can I? If I keep Crow away. I can lock him in my room. Won’t take long. He needs a door open to get out, and he’s too sad to be curious now anyway. And I’ll make sure he doesn’t cause you any more trouble. He just hasn’t met a rabbit before either.”. Feral’s tail bounced now, guileless in its hopeful excitement.

Feet still swinging, Feral’s ears swivelled to attention well before someone entered the waiting room from the back end of the agency. The footsteps didn’t belong to anyone she knew well, but the bright-and-pale figure that emerged wasn’t entirely unfamiliar. Someone recent, but not someone she’d talked to. New hero? Sidekick, anyway. Feral generally didn’t have attention to spare for them. Was this the person she was waiting for? Hard to say, even if the feather-armed girl in overalls was looking directly at her, at least until she spoke and crossed her bird arms at her. Could she fly?

Cinder. Easier to say and remember than Haruka. Feral nodded, to confirm that she was indeed Feral, and slid from the chair to rise smoothly to her (urk) booted feet. ”It’s nice to meet you, Cinder,” she said, carefully formal as she shook out her tail to compensate for the time spent with it stuck through the back of a chair. ”I don’t... know much about this. Blue Weaver - she said I was supposed to...” She trailed off a bit, struggling to explain something she didn’t really know while still remaining polite and formal, but brightened obviously when Cinder suggested they go outside. Outside was much better, as long as she wasn’t cold or wet. But that would not be the case today. The weather was much too nice, and besides, she knew she’d be able to warm up again afterwards even if something did happen. That reliability did wonders for the mood.

”I’ve been on patrols with Blue Weaver before,” she offered hesitantly once they were outside, her amber eyes quickly adjusting to the sunlight leaning comfortably on her skin and fur. ”Not recently, though.” She had been much too busy with school. UA asked and expected a lot of its students, and she had extra work on top of that. But she’d mostly been keeping up on it all lately. True, she had more to do, as usual, once she finished with this thing today, but that was something to worry about later. For now, she was out in the streets, warm and fed and dry, not with her pack but with the knowledge that they were safe and well, and as such she moved smoothly, alert but calm and content, and only a little bit like she’d happily break into a run on the next step, simply for being outside and on the move.

The long-eared mystery student flinched, and Feral’s ears caught the movement even if the floor took up most of her visual field, and she nearly bolted herself. Her muscles were already tensed, so the sudden tension did very little, and she forced her feet to stay anchored to the ground like they had sunk into fresh concrete. Not to trap her, but to keep her from being dumb. Slowly, slowly, she flexed and then stretched out her toes and her feet, carefully shifting her weight to loosen her legs before anything cramped.

Hanako Miruku. A name. This person had a name. And she offered it. She wasn’t trying to hide anything or run off to report Crow’s bad behaviour. The apology had worked, at least so far. She just had to keep going like this. It would be okay. It would. She could make it be okay. ”I-“ Names. She wasn’t relaxed enough for this by far. Just thinking about names was bringing her tension right back up, even more than usual because if this Hanako did decide to report it, it would be even easier to bring all the consequences down on Feral if she knew her name. Except no, it wouldn’t make a difference, because the school knew about her and Hanako had seen her face, so she was very identifiable. She swallowed. ”I’m Feral. My name is. Um.”. A slow breath out. ”I, uh. I came to get Crow.”. She lifted the limp, flat-eared cat slightly. ”He jumped between the balconies. I’m sorry if he caused any trouble!”

The offending cat grumbled petulantly, coming through to Feral as had to find smell. Feral’s ears flicked, and her own nostrils flared, and she looked around the room until she caught sight of the cage. ”What do you have?” she asked, pure curiosity seeping into her voice.