As the smoke rises...

Nejisuke Metaruhando sinks out of a telephone pole across the street from his house. He is thinking thoroughly over his situation, after his talk with Jisenki his knowledge of the situation had increased. He starts to walk across the street to his house, and is on the sidewalk in front of it, when his house explodes. Nejisuke Metaruhando flies backwards into the building across the street. The flames leap across his backyard, and his factory explodes too, and these flames would last for a while due to all the chemicals there. Nejisuke stands slowly and gazes with his mouth wide open, when his cell phone vibrates in his pocket, signaling a text message. It reads: If you're recieving this, then i'm captured and your house is gone, in a failed assasination attempt, or at least that is your alibi. I can't let you take a fall for me. -NS Nejisuke melts the phone to delete the message and any trace of it, then walks off through campus.

Riko had been wandering around ever since the day began. She was pretty bored at the moment, but that boredom completely vanishes when she hears an explosion nearby. Quickly, she ran across the grass while dragging Drossel in order to figure out where that explosion came from and what was wrong. As she dashed across the campus grass to the house, she began to cough from the smoke filling the air and making its way into her lungs. She stopped to cough and catch her breath for a moment and then she continued on. She saw a man walking nearby. To her, it was an unfamiliar man although she assumed that he was a teacher.

She looked at him with curiosity and then bent over to suddenly cough. The smoke was obviously close and then she looked at house that was being engulfed in flames. She coughed some more, looking back at the man. She at first wondered if he had something to do with it but whether he did it, or the house was his couldn't really be determined by her. She stumbled over to him, staggering, tripping, nearly falling. When she was in earshot she called out to him.

"Hey! Excuse me!! Do you realize that this house is on fire? Hey!!?"

Her words were difficult to say as the smoke was surrounding her. It wasn't everyday that smoke filled the air. Where she came from, there wasn't really too much use of fire because of the grass surroundings. She rarely smelled smoke.

As Riko speaks it sort of jars Nejisuke Metaruhando back to reality. He turns to face her and shakes his head to clear it. After working in forges a lot in his life, he hadn't even noticed the smoke. He looks at his house's rubble, flames everywhere. He walks back over to his house and goes next to the flames, he waves his hands over the area, and the flames go out. He does this on all the flames of the house. The smoke starts to dissipate, and Nejisuke sits in front of the rubble that was once his house. He starts to go around the edges, tossing the wooden and metal shards that flew out from the center in the explosion. He tosses the rubble into the main area of the rubble. He sighs, and returned to a sitting position on the sidewalk. What was he going to do??

Riko coughed a little more, nearly choking on the awful smeeling smoke. She saw the man prepare his house and how he tried to fix it. She was distracted by the blinding smoke and she truly did want to help but she couldn't, and once the smoke cleared enough for her to see enough the flames of the house were already extiguished.

This was okay for her she guessed, afterall, she now had less work to do, but she did want to help and her water abilities would have helped out a lot. She walked towards him as he sat on the sidewalk, trying to comfort the man in her own way. She didn't talk with so much enthusiasm but instead tried to help others in her way. Dancing wasn't the answer in this situation though so she figured questions could be a start and the offer to help could come afterwards.

"Um, excuse me sir...do you know how this happened. If someone did this to you, I could always help you to find them or at least help you clean up this mess and maybe rebuild this building."

Nejisuke Metaruhando glances up at the girl standing there. He attempts to put his normal happy but confused smile on his face, but he can't manage it. "No, i don't need any help cleaning up or rebuilding, that and this isn't the time to do that anyway. And i know exactly who did it, why, and how. And there will be a time to hunt them down, but again, now is not the time." Nejisuke Metaruhando has molten metal come up from the ground and cover the entire wreckage to preserve it.

Riko watched as molten metal covered the scrap which was the man's house. The remains of it were being taken care of, or so it seemed. She started to walk off but before she went far, she looked at him and waved.

"Sorry to be a bother. I can help you but it seems like you have things taken care of so maybe I'll see you later."

Nejisuke Metaruhando does a small wave of his own and mutters. "Yeah, another time maybe." He glances over the wreckage of what was once his house, and begins to think over a course of action. It would be hard going, and a lot of his important notes had been caught in the fire. It was going to be difficult resuming his work.

Hatsugen appeared from the sky and landed on the ground. He had been using the buildings' rooftops to search from up above and he had finally found Nejisuke. He jumped down, breathing heavy. It was obvious that he was tired from his trip. His wounds hadn't completely healed and how he was moving around so much made it worse. Hatsugen knew that he had to do his job though, and his job was to get Nejisuke to come to the Underground Prison. He walked up to Nejisuke and noticed the house. He didn't question it but only thought about it in his mind.

"Nejisuke. The Head Warrior and a few of the Tsurabi have asked that you meet us down in the Underground Prison. Don't worry, there's nothing wrong but we need to ask you something. It has something to do with...Suzaku."

Nejisuke Metaruhando glances up at Hatsugen as he lands next to him. He has almost a mournful look on his face. "I'm sure it can be handled without me. I'm currently still in a bit of shock, my house was just blown up, almost with me within it." Nejisuke faces back towards the wreckage. Hatsugen showing up here just proved that Nejisuke Shoujouhi had been caught. That had to be what they were talking about, with Suzaku and the Underground Prison. He would probably go here in a second, but he wanted a moment more to go over things.

Hatsugen grunted a bit, but he could see from the destroyed house that at least he wasn't lying about it. He decided that he wouldn't be too suspicious about Nejisuke this time. He couldn't imagine that a person would destroy his own house for no reason. He turned around towards the direction of the prison and sighed just a bit. He didn't really want to travel back to the prison so soon after taking the time and effort to come this far. He took a running start to get the momentum.

"Alright. Try to make it there Nejisuke."

Nejisuke Metaruhando waves his hand dismisively at Hatsugen. "Allright, i'll head up there soon." Nejisuke starts rumaging through the wreckage for some remains of his records of his research. He finds a small stack of paper, and forms a block of metal over them for storage, then hops onto a nearby building, and begins the travel to the underground prison.