The Saga Begins (Susan & Takeru)

Market research, a.k.a. and excuse to get out of the office for a while. It was also Susan's current assignment and an easy one at that. To be quite frank she was slightly concerned with her downswing of work as of late, normally that would mean someone was preparing to replace but that couldn't be the case. No one else was similarly trained in her field or involved in her same projects. Yet still she couldn't help but feel worry in the back of her mind. This was the second time in a month and always when representatives from Ionize Interactive were present. She was on the fringe of the email traffic as well. If Susan hadn't known any better she would think that her boss was sending her away so that she wouldn't need to interact with anyone on that team... which was consequently summed up with several anecdotal instances and reliable patterns of behavior, so in fact she did know better. Nevertheless it wasn't her concern quite yet. She would file it away for a different day.

But back to the market research, it was a colloquial term used when Mr. Thornton sent her into the shopping plazas to notice trends in pricing and popularity with certain franchises. Susan personally believed that any monkey with a clipboard and basic pattern recognition could do it and she would just aggregate the data back at the office, but so far people couldn't be trusted to accomplish the task. They either treated it as time to slack off or didn't notice the right things. The more competent businesswoman could mix the two successfully, collecting data points as she window shopped and browsed around for what she pleased. It worked best on a one-to-one ratio, but only as long as you could get results. And so far today Susan had collected more than enough information to piece together a brief for moving forward in the coming quarter. At the moment it was fashion that was popular, peripherals were on their way out. She surmised a campaign to accessorize your tech or something of the sort, music players and headphones that were flashy and hip, that sort of thing.

But now that she had collected all that information she was at her last stop of the afternoon with nothing more to do, so she headed to her favorite second-hand bookstore, BookSmarts. It was one of the more popular ones, always with good gems hidden among the pseudo-sciences and outdated biographies that no one wanted to look at. And today she had a particular goal in mind.
"Where... are... you... hi... diiiiiiiiing~?" she would murmur to herself, craning her head to read the spines of the many forgotten tomes as she would occasionally mouth interesting titles to herself.

It was in the used bookshop that Takeru found himself browsing through today.
Usually, the young boy would be browsing the pseudo-scientific section for the alchemy section that was there.
Amongst the pseudo-science though, was a treasure trove of things that he loved.
In particular, a copy of the Simon Necronomicon caught his eye alongside a book on kabbalah referential sciences and the like.
He just loved the occult sciences. Yes, they were on the verge of censorship, and yes, he got the weirdest looks from people (though he made sure to hide it from his Church-y supervisor who was Nun Too Holy, literally), but he enjoyed it. Things like that fascinated him.

"Here tome-y,tome-y,tome-y, tome-y..." he muttered to himself quietly as he perused the shelves for something good, muttering the most interesting titles to himself.
The really good stuff tended to be on the top shelf, which was a pain for him to reach.
Especially when it was a copy of The Red Book: Liber Novus, which was something he had been looking for for a long time.

He saw it, and had to resist the urge to jump for joy.
Mainly because it was on the top shelf.
"... oh goddammit." he thought as he tiptoed up and reached for it.
He could aaaaallllmost touch it, if nobody bumped into him.
Almost.. there...

"No... nnnnnoooooo... In Barren... mmmno..." Susan would peruse up and down the shelves, muttering halves of book titles and affirmations to herself as she did so. Most of the time she would take a little longer and flip through a few pages of some more interesting titles, but she was on the clock even if it was toward the end of her assignment. Fantasy titles were what caught her attention much of the time, sometimes sci-fi but the businesswoman happened to be very picky about that particular genre. Near-future was too bogged down in minutiae and so was the really hard sci-fi unless it broached into real-world topics rather than the author grandstanding about how educated and intelligent they were. At the same time it had to be either completely believable or absolutely abstract.

Susan supposed it wasn't exactly the wisest idea to look for specific books in a used bookstore when she had no personal time to really do so, but she resolved to spend ten minutes and no longer searching through shelves for anything that especially caught her scattered attention. The various titles she was faced with became noise, some books were louder and those she would pick up glance at the covers and premises. Quite frankly most of them were glossy trash, old outdated history books and self-help pieces that were obviously opinionated and had an agenda behind them. It quickly became a soup of random buzz words, they were second-hand books for a reason, and crawling down the aisle at a leisurely stroll turned to a quicker walk as she scanned the spines of the books with ease...

And in doing so, more preoccupied with setting a personal best for how swiftly she could browse through worthless titles, Susan would be unaware of anyone else doing much the same thing. Quite specifically a shorter boy straining to reach something from a taller shelf. Unfortunately for the both of them Susan had been walking with purpose, her neck craning toward the books instead of pointing her head where she was going, and the woman less bumped into the poor child and more accurately completely ran him over. Her temple knocked sharply into his but the momentum carried her forward as she threw her arms out to prevent her fall and grab onto the nearest things available: the boy and the bookshelf. The end result was Susan yelping in a combination of shock and minor pain as she messily tackled the poor kid to the ground and ripped several well-loved tomes from the walls.


Susan lay trembling on the ground for a moment clutching handfuls of books desperately trying to wrap her brain around what events lead to her headache and subsequent time on the ground, but she recovered quickly after working out that the boy on the ground smothered underneath her must be what she "tripped" over. Scrambling to her feet Susan was met with conflicting priorities which really didn't help the situation get any better. First of all she peered around to assess damages, both to herself, her "victim", the area, and her reputation. This consisted of looking over her shoulder to see if anyone had seen that. Unfortunately someone had, as she could see the older man behind the counter perched expectantly as if about to offer aid, or perhaps see just how things played out. She snapped back to the task at hand and... confused her priorities again as she began collecting books and neatly stacking them for placement back on the shelves. You know, instead of checking if he who she had brought to the ground with her was okay.
"Not good not good I didn't mean for this to happen... j-just clean everything up it will all be fine. It's okay, no one will be mad, I-I didn't break anything so that's good. Just have to put everything back, I'm fine, I'm completely fine..." Susan murmured to herself as she crouched down attempting to grab what she tore from the shelves and put them back, having completely forgotten about the boy in her flustered state.

He got it!
He had the prize in his hands!
But then...
The moment she bumped into him and knocked him and the bookshelf down, everything went dark.
He let loose a obscenity that would've gotten him a slap from his parents as he suddenly felt something soft bump into him.
But he didn't notice that until later.

Right now he was in pain, pain, pain, pain, pain.
A side effect of having something heaving fall on top of you. He had served as her inadvertent cushion.
"Oh goddammit. A little help here...?" he mutterred, the pain keeping him from standing up as the wind had been knocked out of him.
He sincerely hoped he still had the book he was looking for.

Susan continued to focus on cleaning up the mess she made, stacking toppled books in a flurry of activity as she scrambled best to put everything back the way it was before someone grew cross with her. Her face had turned as red as a brick with her chagrin and she couldn't stop herself from muttering quietly while her attention was occupied with fixing her mistake. The shy woman began to enter her own little world as she busied her hands, away from the embarrassment and accusatory stares... until it stopped working and it was all she could think about. How everyone must think her inept, a klutz, and the looks they would give her. She would be politely escorted from BookSmarts even though there was always online shopping for her books every visit to the shopping district would be awkward as she passed it by, forever would she be known as the weird clumsy lady that talks to herself too much. Oh, the books! She hadn't torn any, had she...? That would be so much worse! Security would want a word for her and she could pay for the damages, but it wouldn't...

Susan kept cycling through negative thoughts as she continued to frantically place the books back where they belonged when that which she neglected to address in the first place spoke. The boy's pained croaking caused her to yip and loose her footing from her crouch, falling back on her butt. It had never occurred to her that she ran into a person and that person may not be okay.
"U-uh... I'm so sorry...!" she gasped after hesitation, "I-I didn't mean to, I-I didn't see you there and th-then I was... U-uh I don't know, I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!" Her voice trembled as she hovered over the boy, but she wouldn't dare lay a hand on him, not even to help him up though he had asked for it. Another twisted negative thought had entered her mind, just one more wrench in the workings of an efficient machine. She had run into a child and possibly caused him harm, through negligence no less. He had perfect grounds for a lawsuit if he wished. With that one honest mistake Susan could have had her entire life ruined. Her career would go down the tubes, her money forfeit, all because she couldn't do something as simple as watch where she was going. She had even apologized, admitting guilt.

B-But this wasn't over yet! No, this was not! She could still... she could still fix this, it could be fixed! All it would take would be... mmmnnn... nnnnclever maneuvering of speech, yes. She would just need to keep her wits about her and not say the wrong things and it would all turn out alright. The woman bit her lip, in part her nerves getting to her but also in commitment to her idea. She thrust an open hand to the boy to help him up just as he had requested before.
"A-are you okay...?" she spoke softly.

Thankfully Takeru had lawsuits in the back of his mind.
Or more accurately, he had forgotten about them.
"It's alright. It was an accident. At least I... huh?" he said as he looked down, and what he saw next caused him to immediately snap back into reality.
The book he had been holding had been knocked out of his hand in the impact.
"Where'd the book go...?" he muttered as she asked him if he was okay.
"Yeah, sure I am. I..." he said as he took her hand and noticed in the stack was the book.

"Hey, could you give me that red book in the stack please? I was going to purchase that before you bumped into me." he asked her.

Perfect. He had admitted he was okay. This could be accepted as a verbal contract that could bring weight in the event of a civil case when referencing medical care. Had he mentioned to her that he was injured or God forbid his neck was stiff it could have ended very poorly for her. But this was acceptable, any future claims to injury would be met with conflicting statements by the plaintiff and would be thrown out before any competent judge. At least with the lawyers she could afford on her side, that is. It certainly helped that she studied law herself and had known better than to act in any other manner that would incriminate herself. A-Aside from the apologies, but it was too late to un-say those. Susan would lean her full weight backward in order to heft the dazed boy to his feet, nearly falling backward herself in the process. Heels... weren't... the best footwear for this sort of activity.

Luckily for her he seemed preoccupied with something else at the moment, hopefully he would forget how she had barreled him over. Let the store owner remember, let the patrons remember, but if only he would allow this to slip forever from his memory she could make peace with it. She could live with the embarrassment and shame of this memory, never allowing herself to step into BookSmarts for the rest of her natural life. Garnished wages and the stain on her reputation from being indicted for assaulting a minor she could do without. He was more concerned with... a book. Of course, they were in a book store after all.
"Y-yes, of course," she mumbled, fishing through the pile to hand him a red book. A red book, though unlikely the one he was looking for. There were a multitude of them strewn about. But Susan felt it in her best interests to be accommodating lest she put him in a bad mood. N-not that she would not have done what he had asked in the first place, it would simply be rude not to.

"Ah good. Thanks." he said as he took it and examined it.
Yep. It was the one he was looking for.
Thankfully undamaged.
Now that the excitement was finally dying down, he thought back as to what happened as a sudden realization hit him about what the soft thing was.
That must've been her alright.
Slowly the pieces fell together. She must've been reaching for something close to him when she bumped into him, knocking him off balance.
"Ah, let me help you with those." he said, taking a few of the books that had been knocked down and putting them back on the shelf for her.

The boy was odd to be certain. She was the one that had thrown him to the ground, more or less, and he was offering his assistance with her mistake as if it she had never done so. He seemed... preoccupied with something, much like herself at times. Just not at all present in the moment. B-but that was good news, it would mean that he would be more likely to let this little moment slip from his memory and she could go on with the rest of her life unabated.
"Okay, um, that would be great, thank you," she responded meekly to the kid's offer of assistance. Susan would rather she do it herself, honestly, there were a few different reasons why. For one it was her mess and should would like to clean it up herself, for two she didn't want to draw even more attention to her screw-up. For three, as seemingly insulting as it was Susan didn't want to accept help from a child. It made her look incompetent, like she wasn't capable of doing things herself.

The spacey woman would work with a rushed intensity in putting every single tome back to where it belonged, flitting about in an attempt to be both quick and efficient at the task. The sooner she was finished the sooner she could stop messing things up and continue on to work. Her inattentiveness had caused far too much damage already.
"I'm..." she had began to say in an attempt to apologize once more. Susan had to halt herself yet again, remembering that apologies could potentially be used against her in the worst case scenario. As much as she would like to communicate how sorry she was she had to avoid saying it.
"...I-I'm always this clumsy, you really don't need to help me if you don't want to." There, that should suffice. It was a polite way of asking to be left alone yet not quite an apology. She wasn't about to stop him from helping mind you, but this was really her problem to fix.

He smiled and tried to reassure her.
"It's okay, I'm a cadet. Helping people is part of the job. My name is Takeru Kagemaru, by the way." he said, smiling.

As for her clumsiness remark... (that he honestly thought was going to be an introduction...)

"Clumsy? You? I don't think so. Not many people can put that many books back in place as fast as you and I. Especially not clumsy ones." he said.

Susan prickled at his words. A-a Cadet? Him?! Oh God, she had just assaulted an officer! He could turn her in right now if he wanted to! It wouldn't matter what her testimony was, the witnesses she gathered, the lawyers she could afford... all of it would be meaningless in the face of the law. The law was absolute and she was on the wrong side of it this time, her future completely at the mercy of his willingness to forgive. She could feel her skin go cold as she began to shrink in panic, fearful of what she had brought on herself.
"I-I'm S-S-S-Susan..." she managed to stammer through chattering teeth. As she turned to look at him and give him a somewhat frightened grimace she self-fulfilled her own prophecy. Her shaking hands and inattentiveness to the task at hand caused the dusty tome she was in the process of replacing to slip from her fingertips... along with several others.

The woman stared horrified at the toppling books, motionless for a few moments aside from her trembling hands. Mouth agape, as if the books had fallen through the floor itself. To be honest it wasn't even that many, just the inappropriate act that set her on edge.
"N-no, I really am this clumsy... heheh..." Her chuckle would be an uncomfortable one, a poor attempt to normalize the situation as she turned more seriously to cleaning her mess. Once this place was orderly once again she could leave and put down BookSmarts on her list of places never to show her face again. Just like the Chinese restaurant where she spilled soup all over that server or the car wash where she forgot to roll her windows down. Although it would seem more criminal to leave abruptly without giving her information when there was a crime in progress it was really the only choice she had, either that or pray for leniency and that she could still find work as a janitor. Between the right choice and the smart choice, Susan would much rather protect her interests than throw herself on a sacrificial pyre because it's the right thing to do. The boy was unharmed, she was fixing her mistake, nothing was broken... ethically nothing was amiss here. A-as soon as her hands could stop trembling and she could fit every last book in every shelf she would disappear, b-but no sooner. That wouldn't be right of her.

He himself was starting to get a bit nervous. Why was she so terrified when he said he was a cadet? Should't that have been reassuring...
"Oh wait." he thought, suddenly mentally connecting the dots.
He turned the situation around in his head.
She had bumped into (and potentially injured) a cadet.
Even if he was just a low-ranking grunt in the cadets, he could potentially be as vindictive as he wanted to her.

Really, was this how most people felt around cadets?
He figured that they should be apologetic at least, sure, but not actively terrified.
That was just rude.

So he gave her a reassuring smile. A genuinely reassuring one, one that didn't, due to his teeth, resemble more of a psychotic smirk.
Just a simple smile.

"Nice to meet you, Susan." he said before he calmly caught the tomes that were falling and pushed them back into place.
Working at a library shelving books had its perks in certain skill growths, it seemed.

"Calm down, Susan. It's okay. Deep breaths. I get clumsy like this when I panic too." he said calmly.

"I'm okay... I'm okay... I'm okay..." the flustered woman would repeat to herself. Seemingly an obvious lie, she wasn't doing all that great, but it was more for reassurance than anything else. The boy's or her own, it was difficult to tell exactly who she was attempting to reassure. In either case she was beginning to calm. It wasn't apparent to her that he wanted to take her to court or throw her in jail, and the more she began to reflect on it the more unlikely it seemed. Besides, Takeru was just a kid. Cadet or no it was unlikely that he knew much about the legal system. Even a witch hunt had its line in the sand and that line could be moved to the left or the right by competent paralegals. ...Unless camaraderie was being used as a tactic to lure her into a false sense of complacency in order to elicit a confession of some sort. She would... try not to think about that other possibility. In any case leaving the bookstore was a priority on her mind. She had to remove herself from the situation. Not from the threat of persecution, oh no this was far worse than that.

People were starting to stare.

Susan didn't much care for the odd looks and judging glares, she would never grow used to them. Clumsy may not have been a good word to describe her but absentminded certainly was. It was once every other day that she would cause some sort of accident by not paying attention or running into something or tripping over an object she didn't see with her face buried in her tablet. The businesswoman always did her best to save face in those scenarios, of course by making herself scarce as swiftly as could be allowed and vowing never to return.
"Are you two doing alright back there? Need some help?" the man at the counter called out to them as the two planted books back where they belonged.
"No...! I thi-... I think we're just fine...!" she would call back. The color had all but drained from her face but she was aaaaalll... moooooooost.... done. A space for every book and every book in its space. As she had organized the shelves Susan had made dutifully sure to arrange each title in alphabetical order within each row, which was simpler done than said with the context clues from the novels already resting on the shelf.

"Good, everything is good now, all fixed, all good." Susan muttered to herself as she checked and double-checked her handiwork to ensure that no one could have any complaints whatsoever. After swapping a pair of books that differed by the fourth letter everything was complete. The frantic woman put her hand out toward the books as if ordering a dog to stay as she backed away, walking with purpose toward the front of the store. The exit. So close and yet so far away. In her hurry she hadn't even uttered a single goodbye to Takeru. As rude as it was she had merely forgotten to when the shopkeep addressed them. The businesswoman was more preoccupied with avoiding further embarrassment than exchanging pleasantries.

She seemed shaken, but otherwise okay.
Then again, he would be too in this situation.
As for when the clerk called back...
"Nah, we're fine!" he said back cheerfully.
As it was fixed, he sighed a sigh of relief.
"It's good now, see? I... Susan?" he said as he looked around.
Then he saw her.
She was now running off.
He sighed.

"Guess I better call it quits..." he muttered as he walked to the cashier to buy his book.

Susan would have never in her wildest dreams imagined herself scuttling away from a quiet bookshop into the bustling Backlight crowd for peace of mind yet here she was. Typically it was the opposite, but typically she could remain composed in a place of business. This event was... just an anomaly, a hiccup in her otherwise professional acumen. Still, she would have to make a mental note to not return for some time lest she be remembered as the woman who knocks children to the ground. Four to six months should suffice, she doubted anyone would remember her for that long despite her faux pas. W-what was the statute of limitations on aggravated assault, again...?

In any case the day was not over yet and the businesswoman still had a moderate amount of work to accomplish. Though her tasking was complete here there were still a few things she wanted to finish at the office and all her data points from today needed to be aggregated into an Access database so that it could be presented to the shareholders. The team from Ionize Interactive were likely long gone or rather wrapping up and exchanging pleasantries, if she hurried she may be able to meet some of them and perhaps gain insight into their collaboration with Mr. Thornton. Susan wasn't much for surprises when it came to sensitive dealings such as these and despite his efforts to send her away she had completed her work and nothing was preventing her from dropping by company headquarters. Susan decided to hurry, nearly bumping into groups of people as she speed-walked to her car with her tablet in hand, an attempt to get a jump on entering in all her information. She wouldn't want to leave anything unfinished by the time she left and staying past 6 wasn't something she was willing to do.