[Job] Defending a maiden's honor (With Catherine)

Kenshiro wasn’t sure exactly what caused him to keep taking some of these jobs, but in this case there was a woman with a plight that needed corrected… sort of. While unsure as to what personal articles someone could have stolen, not to mention their motivation for doing so, it just didn’t seem as though it was something that he should just ignore, and so he was on his way to Yorknew college. There wasn’t a whole lot to worry about as far as danger went, but he was resolved to still study the situation and go from there. As he wasn’t exactly experienced when it came to speaking to women as anything but a master, it was socially justifiable for him to be able to leave his comfort zone and help her.

As he reached the college he began to feel intimidated. The slaves weren’t allowed to own their own clothing, they really hadn’t even been allowed to read, but going to a school was completely out of the question. The feeling only got worse as he neared the dorms. He was going to be alone with a girl and that was nerve wracking in and of itself. They were supposedly equals and he had only interacted as equals with women that were slaves or women that were of higher station. In those situations he always knew how to act, but in this case he had no idea what to say, or think, or act, or do. In many ways gaining his freedom had become a complicated matter.

After finally reaching the door to the dorm he was supposed to be meeting the client at, Ken raised his hand to knock, but stopped short as his heart rate started to increase. That didn’t even happen when he was in a fight by this point, but for some reason his heart was racing. A few deep breaths later and he was ready to try knocking on the door again, but still his nerves stopped him. It was only on the third try, and only by not thinking about it, that he managed to finally knock on the door.
”Hello?” The girl said softly, almost nervously.
”I.. hi-… I was… the job… I.. uh-“ He was at a loss for words. She wasn’t his master or his master’s wife, she wasn’t a gladiator, she was a girl… a free girl and he was a free man. Still somehow he couldn’t manage to look her in the eye or even speak to her as he had with female slaves.

word count: 427/800

Catherine was on the university campus when she was looking for something to do. The girl had visited old colleagues in the chemistry department, but their progress was rather embarrassing. Since her finishing her degree there had yet to be anyone even bring up anything interesting. It was a shame for the university that the girl had no interest in further research. Catherine felt as if she knew enough about the topic and it just had lost its interest.

While looking for something to do she passed by one of the digital blackboards near the university's entrances. Usually a place where a lot of students placed small job requests or things like “band member needed”, “party at five” and so on. She quickly scanned the board for something good, stopping as she noticed a familiar handwriting. Someone had stolen personal belongings from one of the students a few years below her, she remembered that girl from a party. A nice and innocent girl back then, very eager to study and it upset her a little that thieves were running around the school ground. After all this was the university where she had gone to. Obvious Catherine had to take that request and so she quickly made her way to the dormitories.

Once there she spotted a black haired man, which clearly did not belong in this place, but maybe he was just a friend of someone living there, so she gave it not much thought, but then she quickly noticed that their destination was the same. Maybe someone else was already taking care of the thief or maybe he was the thief trying to come clean and apologize? Observing the situation made her giggle a little, from his hesitation it seemed as if he was the thief, trying to find the strength to confess.

The whole situation took too long for her taste! If he was the thief he was supposed to get it done, then Catherine just had to find something else to do, maybe grab a coffee. She could not stand to wait and just decided to step into the situation, at the same time the door finally opened and a girl, which Catherine recognized, peaked out nervously. Without waiting for the man to say his thing and loud enough to overshadow anything he had to say anyway Catherine interrupted: “I'm here to help with your stolen goods.” Her eyes shifted from the girl to the young man, which after a closer look seemed to be more of a boy. “Are you the one that stole her things?” Her voice remained neutral the whole time, fitting the bored expression on her face. If he was not the thief, she did not want to seem hostile.

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Words: 884

Kenshiro looked taken aback. Of course he wasn’t the theif, but that wasn’t the problem now. There was another girl here, another girl he had to interact with, which meant double the stress.
”Of course I’m not!” He somehow managed to say with conviction before returning to his original state of personality. ”I’m… the job… was going to um- well that is… I’m here to…” He stammered. The job was of course necessary, but there just wasn’t enough riding on this for him to muster up the courage he needed to talk to these women. Besides that he could honestly see why she would have thought him to be the thief. His black sleeveless shirt was somewhat jagged around the arm slots and his black hakama pants were somewhat unconventional. Add to that the silver mark under his eye and the black “69” on his cheek and you had someone who easily sounded like they could have been a criminal. Thankfully though, he was able to remind himself that almost none of the people in this country would have seen him in the arena and almost the same number were likely to notice the slave mark on his cheek and identify it for that. Even though they didn’t know, somehow the mark still meant to him that he was a runaway slave because that’s what it still meant to him.
He needed to get out of his own head so he finally spoke up, trying to get enough courage to at least make himself clear.
”I want… to help. I need to..” He said contritely. He needed to help, he needed to do something, make contacts, and find his way. Every part of him wanted to tell this new girl that he wanted to do this job with her, especially given the difficulty that he was having with talking to those of the opposite sex. If they needed to gather information there was no way he was going to be able to get everything he needed from someone if he had to ask coherent questions to a woman that had also been a victim. If there were no other victims he would know this crime was personal, but the problem with him being unable to talk to a female still stood.

”Can… that… would you… work with… um..” He stammered, managing to get far enough this time to point to himself as he looked at the girl that had apparently also come to help with the job. He felt like if he spent enough time around a girl, he could maybe find a way to talk to them on a case-by-case basis, but that was going to take a bit.
”But I’m…” He couldn’t figure out what he was trying to say, and he would much rather have faced a tiger or two huge gladiators in the arena, or hell even that cat Leonal that he had met a little bit before this if it just meant that he wouldn’t have to discuss things with women ever again.

word count: 1392/800

Catherine let out a loud sigh at the boy's speech pattern. Was something wrong with his head? “Anyway, lets look at the crime scene first!” Quickly she steped into the dorm room without a warning and started to take a look around. The whole room was actually rather clean and the only thing that struck her as messy was the closet. As if it was her room she walked past the other girl and began to take a look inside. Again everything seemed in order, other than the lack of underwear. Next her gaze shifted to the laundry basket next to the girl's bed and she continued to search this, merciless throwing any piece of clothes across the room.

After a moment of considering the whole situation and taking a closer look at the girl she concluded: “So it was your underwear that got stolen.” The girl clearly had a much too well developed body to not wear any bras, which made the absence of those a big problem. “I could have just told you that” Protested the girl, looking at her now messy room, but Catherine just shrugged it off and made her way back to the door, where her new Watson was waiting. “Guess we have a chase of underwear thievery, young man. Our best guess is to look into the male dormitories first!”

After having said everything necessary and done everything unnecessary she started walking down the hall way, expecting the black haired male to just follow her.

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Words: 1643

Kenshiro watched the girl for what felt like forever, mostly due to embarrassment, as she searched through Penny’s personal belongings. As she started flinging panties about and looking at random clothes he found himself suddenly feeling a little more embarrassed as his trousers began to stir, causing him to quickly turn his back on the two women. When he had fought against female gladiators in the arena he hadn’t had any issue when they fought naked or lost clothes during the battle, but this was, yet again, a horrible atrocity he could only describe has horrible yet awesome at the same time. As the girl finished, he found himself closing his eyes in the futility of it all. He had thought to ask the girl for information himself but no questions had been asked, it was all search and seizure. Naturally when she walked out, even though he wanted to at least ask her what her name was, he simply put his hands together and bowed to Penny before turning and following the lead of the woman who was apparently going to be searching the boy’s dormitories now. At least that meant that he would be able to ask some questions of his own.

Ken followed her all the way to the boy’s dorms, still not sure who he was even following or what exactly it was that they were doing here. It’s not like the thief was just going to be like “oh yeah these are Penny’s bras.”
”Um.. miss. What’s your… name?” He asked, realizing only a little too late that he had hesitated to say the word name. She didn’t seem to have any problem ordering him around though, and for some reason as infuriating as that was to his pride, it was also a little more familiar and that made him breathe a little easier when it came to talking to her.

1959/800

Catherine walked across the campus in long strides, clearly knowing the shortest way to the male student's dormitory. She stopped to answer as they were about to enter: “Catherine Redfen, just Catherine is fine.” She only spend a moment to look at the boy before looking at the dorm. “About two-hundred rooms, so we best ask the care take first.” That amount of possible locations she had to look into made her sigh a little. It was not even certain that one of the guys there had stolen the underwear, even when it was a good start. In her days at the university sometimes the boys stole underwear as part of a test of bravery. For some reason her own underwear had never been stolen, maybe it was not their taste?

Determined to get this task done quickly she stepped into the dormitory and towards the room of the dorm-head: an old professor for philosophy: a subject she did not really care one bit about. For that reason she made it quick to explain the situation, asking for any clues, which after a bit of philosophy nonsense lead to the advice to check with the students in charge of the floors. Closing the door again she took a moment to think about it, till coming up with the best way to do it: “We would be quicker if we split up, but you might get lost, lets check floor by floor.” She hoped that one of the next guys at least had SOME clue for their search, otherwise she would really end up having to search every room.

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Words: 2227

Kenshiro nodded, acknowledging silently that he understood and was consenting to her plan. Even if he wanted to search a different floor he had no intention of trying to use that many words with the Catherine. With the aforementioned nod, he turned on heel, heading toward one of the dorm rooms. After taking to the hall, simply walking as if he had some sort of purpose that was meant to carry him past all the dorms, he was able to look inside several of them. With his eyes peeled for any of the rooms without a female currently occupying them that also had some buxom woman’s bras, he came to the conclusion that whomever was doing it was behind one of the closed doors, or was somehow hiding the underwear they had stolen and had the audacity to leave their door open because they were so confident in their hiding spot.

With his conclusion drawn, he went back, getting ready to check all of the closed doors to see if any of them had anything in plain view. It was during this suddenly “brilliant” trek that he noticed a boy leave his room, slinking out of it quickly and shutting the door behind him just as quickly. That struck him as suspicious for obvious reasons, and he acted accordingly, moving in to pick the lock and enter the room. Despite everything he thought he was going to find there was nothing there to be seen, at least not right off the bat. As he thought back to how Catherine searched earlier, he realized that might be his best bet right at the moment, and began taking stuff out and throwing it everywhere. It would let the guy know they had been there, but it would also make his behavior predictable and he could tail the guy. After about twenty minutes of searching, found the bra that he had been searching for. In this instance it was with a small collection of bras hidden in a dresser under the guy’s clean shirts. With one bra in hand he headed out of the dorm room and out to try to find his companion to see what she thought about the whole situation.

word count: 2517/800

Meanwhile, Catherine was standing in a guy's room. The walls covered with woman's underwear. Some accompanied by a live sized picture of women. Half of the girls had red cross marks over their head and some of the bras were visibly drenched in some kind of white liquid. As she kept looking through the room she found a book, filled with more pictures, this time of naked women, some of them displayed multiple bruises and a box in which something looking like a goat skull, a few candles and a bloody knife were neatly arranged.

Sadly non of the bra's matched her client's cup size. So this obviously was not the culprit of the thievery. With a light shrug she turned to the room's owner, which had been standing behind her ropes in his hands the whole time: “Well sorry for bothering you. You are clearly not the one I'm looking for.” She let out a light sigh as she made her way back to the door, before turning around and taking a last look at the room, maybe there was something wrong with it and its inhabitant, but there were many weirdos on campus. “Have a good day.”

With this room she was done with the floor she wanted to search, all that was left was to look for the boy who hopefully found something in his own search. If not they had to go find another lead to look into. Just as she wanted to start looking for him she heard his steps on the stairway. “Found anything?” She yelled down as she reached the stairs and already saw that the boy had a bra in hand. With a light smirk she stepped down towards him “So you are an underwear thief after all!” Quickly she took the bra for herself and compared the size in her mind, with the breasts their client displayed. “I think we have a winner here. Good job!”

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Words: 2842

Somewhat surprised that it had been that easy, he smirked, finally starting to get comfortable with Catherine.
”That’s good...Thanks. All I saw was the guy act weird.” He said still somewhat quietly, but without so much stammering. It was likely the fact that she was taking charge which gave him some inclination of a social caste difference like what he was used to for so many years. It did occur to him though, if he had only found a drawer full of bras what had she found? Surely there was another lead or something. True the guy had been acting suspicious, but that was his only lead in this instance. Something didn’t stack up right, and he found himself wondering now more than ever if Catherine had found something else or if a small detail had managed to escape either one of them.
”So wait there was nothing else, it was just this guy? I mean I had to search for this in his room.” He added. There was not a ton to go off of. Additionally the last statement he uttered had come a bit more naturally. It was surprising to him that he was getting comfortable with a girl this quickly, despite the circumstances. He also found it odd that someone was attempting to steal women’s underwear on the campus. Sure he had found the bra in the guy’s room, but there was something else that didn’t seem to make sense.
”Did we check any of the professor’s offices?” He asked. It was still a little too much to completely explain his thought process, but it just seemed as though it would narrow down the suspects. If they found something in a professor’s office it was obviously something flawed, if they didn’t then they could be sure it was a student and there were a lot less professors than students.


3154/800

“What did you expect?” Catherine looked at the young boy a bit confused. He had found one of the stolen bras and a guy acting weird. Did he expect this was a great underwear thievery conspiracy? She shrugged and took the bra into her hand. “We best just ask the room owner where he got this, simple as that.” If after that they had to check other places or start asking around again, then they could do that after that. It was not like the stolen underwear was a kidnapped girl, chained down in a room slowly filling with water. She let out a light yawn and started walking down the stairs, keeping a look out for a man reacting strangely to the bra in her hand.

“So which room was it?” Staring down the long hall way there were many rooms and the woman did not feel like just randomly going from one to another, but before the boy could answer her Catherine spotted a young man looking at the two and quickly turning around to start running. “Lets follow him!” There was no time to think if he was really the culprit, running from them was enough of a reason to chase.

Following the man down the stairs to the entrance, he was surprisingly fast. The woman could hardly keep up with him. It was clear she would not just catch him on her own. “Boy keep chasing him, I try to cut him off!” Lucky Catherine knew the campus like her backyard, which she did not have, because she was staying in a hotel, but if she had one, she would have knowen it like the back of her hand!

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Words: 3439

Kenshiro nodded, responding to Catherine’s order with his own nen.
”Blaze blue!” He roared, transmuting his aura to electricity and activating his ten in order to boost his speed. Each step was a large stride forward as gravity and friction decreased their effects on him thanks to the electromagnetic field that grew around him. With that he was moving notably faster than the guy he was chasing. It became apparent that the figure was in fact the man that had attempted to leave his room quietly earlier, but he hadn’t expected him to start burning rubber.
”You won’t be able to escape!” He shouted at the running man just before his quarry turned a corner.

Normally at the speed he was moving, it was expected that Ken would have had to slow down, but he instead jumped toward the wall and to his left, running a few steps along the wall until gravity started to drag him down. His own electrical energy crackled as he jumped away from the wall toward the now open door to the stairwell he saw the man attempting to escape to, but like anyone might expect from someone with probably no training, he tried to escape by going upstairs. That either meant he had some form of method of escape on the roof, or he had no earthly idea how to loose someone that was chasing him. As the guy started to ascend Kenshiro leaped onto the handrail, jumping upward to the next handrail and taking root on the stairs in order to resume his speed once again and close the gap further between himself and the bra thief. It had been a bit since someone showed themselves to be quite as fast as he, but that only made this chase a bit more fun.

3739+/800

stats:

Catherine took a small short-cut as she realized the way their target and the electical hunting dog were running. Instead of being surprised about the Aura use, she was actually rather upset. The woman kept her powers mostly hidden and did not use them for something as silly as chasing an underwear thief. She shook her head at the view.

The actual short-cut she was taking was walking up to the bus station near the entrance of the university. The campus was so big that in total four stations were placed around it. “Two minutes hm?”

Meanwhile the tief was running up the stairs of one of the lecture buildings, quickly dashing past other students and through filled class rooms, rushing towards one of the windows and jumping one floor down to a smaller storage building. For just stealing underwear he was extremly desperate to not get caught.

The bus was rather full, but for the short drive Catherine did not need a seat, so she instead made sure one of the elder professors got to sit down and had a nice relaxed talk about a book he read recently: “I agree the justice the main character is talking about is quite different from what we would call justice in modern days, but you must admit Sir that it made for quite the interesting climax.”

Not far the thief still chased by the lightning user was dashing across the park like centre of the campus, avoiding other students taking a break and enjoying their lunch in the warm sun. Ignoring the loud complains from his colleagues and professors. He almost tumbled over as he tried to jump over a small fence, before dashing through the university's botanic garden.

Catherine had arrived at her destination and guessing by the noise coming from near her she had guessed right. “Would you please wait a moment.” She asked the bus driver. Then she saw the culprit, obviously in his rush he did not recognize the woman. All on his mind was getting rid of the boy chasing him and so he speed up towards the bus, just when he though he was about to enter the bus and drive away into the sunset a foot stretched out in front of his own feet, he tumbled and crashed against the bus' side, where Catherine grabbed him at the collar and made sure he would not run any more.

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Words: 4143

Thoroughly annoyed by the route the thief was taking, Kenshiro opted to keep a slight distance, but wanted to remain close enough to make the guy feel like he was on his heels. It wouldn’t be that hard to use more nen to stop him from continuing to move, but Catherine must have had something planned or something if she was leaving him with instructions vague enough to suggest that she had something up her sleeves.

The chase carried them through a large group of people and he started to back down away from the thief, watching as the people around him looked at them as they ran, but most of them seemed to go back to their regular activity. It caused a little bit of a stir, but it wasn’t as if people were looking at some sort of supernatural phenomena.

Ken smirked as he saw Catherine and the thief running straight for him. Thanks to the fact that no one that hadn’t been in the immediate area seemed to be causing a scene, he didn’t think anyone around them was using gyo and when he dropped his aura no one else seemed to notice and he felt way more awake now than he had before. He came to a halt when he got to his quarry and his compatriot and thought for a moment.
”Are you interrogating him or am I?” He asked, sincerely wondering whether he was going to have to wing it, or if he would be able to watch her and potentially learn some sort of new skill.

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“I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I won't do it again.” Yelled the young culprit, while Catherine threw him on the ground in front of her and stepped onto his chest to keep him down. “Interrogate? Where do you think you are?” She let out a loud sigh and put some more pressure onto the man's chest. “As long as he returns all the underwear, apologizes and does not do it again that is all we need.” With that said she raised her foot and squatted down to reach into the thief's pocket, pulling out his wallet. “We just leave his student ID at the girl, so when he wants it back he has to do the thing's I said.”

Throwing the wallet back at the man she turned around, pointing her path towards the girl's dormitories, while engaging in a conversation with her young Watson: “You should learn to act appropriate to your surrounding.” To her it felt like she was talking to a wild animal, with no clue of civil life, so she made herself very clear: “I do not think it is wise to over use your strength, for something as little as chasing an underwear thief.” To finish her lecture she shrugged and let out a light sigh: “But maybe you just don't know what to do with your abilities.”

By then they had reached the girl's dormitory again. With this task almost done Catherine already started thinking about something new to keep her entertained.

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Words: 4656

Kenshiro thoroughly disagreed with the girl. Interrogation would have revealed if he had done this to anyone else, or if there was someone else stealing underwear. The crime wasn’t exactly causing any physical harm to anyone, but at the same time he didn’t like taking half measures. Either dedicate oneself to fully completing a job or don’t bother doing it at all. Still without any real authority to pull something like that off there was no point in arguing it. He agreed about the solution with leaving his ID card with the girl from whom he had stolen. What he didn’t agree with was her lecturing him about the use of his nen. He didn’t know what her circumstances were, but he distinctly thought she was in the wrong to lecture him. Without any internal debate, or overly thought out procedure on the matter of how to approach her, he started to explain it out for her.
”No, people without nen can’t see nen, and people with nen won’t think anything weird about it. Besides that the guy was running, I used my nen to keep up with him and control the situation. I don’t see that as not being wise or being inappropriate to my surroundings and I was fully aware of my surroundings. The only people paying attention were right-“ He was cut off by their sudden arrival at the girl’s dormitory and as he realized his voice was starting to rise, and that he had somehow gotten up the audacity to speak to this girl this way, he stopped mid-sentence.

He had been so wrapped up in Catherine insulting the precious skill he had learned from his teacher and friend that he hadn’t even noticed that people were now listening to their conversation just a little bit. At this point he wished more than anything else that he could use his nen to just disappear. He had made a ton of progress in one day in getting over talking to women and just took a step backward. He was resolute in his decision now to just let her partner turn the job in here so they could collect the reward. It had been a fun experience, but all good things needed to come to an end at some point.

word count: 5038/800

All done and every word said Catherine remained silent for the last few steps up the stairs and towards their job giver's room. She was happy the problem was solved, even if they only brought one of the stolen bra's with them, the culprit was found and would surely deliver the remaining ones.

After a quick knock she held the ID card towards the girl's face. “This is the culprit.” Dropping it into the open hand of their client she took another short look at her. “I told him to come apologize and he will hopefully return the stolen goods, here is one.” Next she dropped the bra into the girl's hand, who quickly hid the big slingshot behind her back. “You can decide what to do with the guy, if you want him punished I suggest a visit at the campus security, otherwise I would consider this job done.” Catherine smiled a little over her accomplishment, even when the girl was still trying her best to follow her fast speech.

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Words: 5209 - job done