677/The (Magic) Shed

The (Magic) Shed
Date of Scene:	30 October 2023
Location:	The Shed
Synopsis:	Kyouka calls on a few trusted students to show them a handy secret.
Cast of Characters:	Kyouka Inai, Naru Osaka, Usagi Tsukino, Wako Agemaki

---

Kyouka Inai has posed:
    One random October afternoon, several students will receive text messages from Kyouka.

Kyouka TXT: meet me behind the club building after classes get out. don't tell anyone where you're going.
Kyouka TXT: its nothing weird i promise
Kyouka TXT: ok its a little weird but its not bad weird

    Regardless of how that is received, Kyouka is indeed waiting behind the club building in the afternoon when classes get out. Dressed in her usual school outfit, sunglasses in place, she leans against the wall with arms crossed, chewing her bubblegum and waiting for the students she texted to show up.

Naru Osaka has posed:
To this point at least, any weird that Kyouka presents has been relatively low on the general 'weird' scale that Naru has going in her head. Sometimes it's yet more ways the world is trying to end, but that's not so much 'weird' as 'well crap, what now?', and 'not bad weird' seems to imply that it is not another apocalypse.

Naru clearly looped past the cafeteria on her way to the clubs building, based on the coffee that she's carrying as she approaches Kyouka. Still in uniform, with her satchel looped across her, she waves before she's close enough to greet. "Good afternoon, Inai-sensei."

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
The texts are a little concerning, but not that much. It's Inai-sensei, and she'd say if it was a panic button problem, and besides - Usagi's feeling charged up for new weird, like her battery has been reset to full. She'd had an amazing dance with her wonderful boyfriend, received a gift so touching she still smiled at the mere thought, and had found a new Senshi, who was Makoto-chan, who was so pretty and nice and cooked and had punched Sunbreaker in the face! And sure, onay, Usagi had gotten a little thrashed in between, but she'd been rescued by Tuxedo Kamen, and also Kazuo, who was great but her boyfriend's boyfriend, you know?

All of this is to say she shows up with a bounce in her step that makes her uniform skirt swish-swish. "Naru-chan! Inai-sensei! What's up? What's this little weird?"

Wako Agemaki has posed:
Wako takes longer to turn up, which might be explained at least in part by the surgical mask that's covering half her face and the thickness of her voice behind it. "Sorry," she says, cheerfully if stuffily, as she catches up to Usagi and Naru near the spot Kyouka asked them to meet. "I caught a bit of a cold, so my head's not working right, but I'm here. What's the new weird?"

Kyouka Inai has posed:
    Kyouka gives Naru a look as the girl approaches. "You didn't bring any for the rest of the class?" She asks, half-in-jest, of the coffee that the girl is carrying. But Usagi and Wako are here too, so she is rapidly distracted.

    Usagi looks energetic and cheerful. Wako looks a bit like death warmed over. But everybody is here. "I've got something to show you girls." Kyouka says, with a grin. "Something I think will help us out in our... endeavors."

    She turns towards the wooded patch which lies within the school grounds, but behind the buildings. "Come on, follow me." There's a path through the trees, not a paved one or anything but more just like an open dirt track showing where people have walked before, free of underbrush, and it's down this that she leads the small group.

Naru Osaka has posed:
Naru reaches into her satchel at Kyouka's comment with a little smirk and pulls out a wrapped cookie and offers it to the teacher. "I did bring enough for the class, just I know Usagi doens't drink coffee." There's cookies for everyone, to be truthful. She really did bring enough to share.

Naru follows along, curious. "Are we headed to Never-never land or something?"

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
There's a cookie for everyone, and Usagi is Pleased capital P - even if she is looking at Wako in concern. "Ahh, but are you feeling okay? Want me to bring some soup to your dorm later?"

It's a conversation to have on the walk, though Usagi follows the trail through the woods dubiously. On the one hand, last time she was in the woods at school, they had grilled meats! And other delicious delights. On the other hand, Naru-chan had definitely seen some kind of ghost? So. But Inai-sensei said this was supposed to help so -

"We'd get to fly there, so that would be pretty cool. Inai-sensei would have to be a pirate, though!"

Wako Agemaki has posed:
Wako sniffles a bit behind her mask before nodding to Usagi with a couple of quick bobs of her head. "I'm okay, really! Though I won't say no to soup." Or to a cookie, clearly. The mask means she can't immediately devour the one Naru provides for her, but she accepts it gratefully and holds it in both hands as she follows along down the path.

"Wouldn't we need pixie dust for that?" she muses in Naru and Usagi's direction as they walk. "I'm seeing a distinct lack of pixies."

Kyouka Inai has posed:
    The wooded area inside the school's perimeter wall, but behind the buildings, isn't large. It's thick enough that you can't easily see from one side to the other, but the point is that there's really not that far to walk.

    "No never-land, I'm afraid." Kyouka says, listening to the chatter behind her, as they emerge into a small clearing. In the middle of said clearing is... a shed. It looks like some kind of old maintenance building, like the sort of thing a groundskeeper would store tools in. It's maybe the size of a normal garden shed- barely big enough for two or three people to stand inside, let alone do anything inside. It is also pretty run-down, partially overgrown, and looks like it hasn't been used in a decade.

    "Ta-da!" Kyouka says, looking pleased with herself, as she gestures at the shed.

Naru Osaka has posed:
"You need honey tea with hot sacue." Naru notes to Wako. "Which sounds awful, but it's not actually that bad, but clears up a stuff nose like CRAZY."

Tromp tromp.. ta da! Naru pauses in the clearing to consider the shack. Perhaps all the way to a shed, if one is being generous.

"Okay, I know our room tends to be a little messy." Naru comments, clearly uncertain why they are visiting a shack on the school grounds.

And honestly, it's only a little messy in a few spots.

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
"It sounds awful, but it's pretty good! Naru-chan forced it on me when we were kids, and it worked pretty great. You can put it in some tea!"

The walk through the woods is easy enough, but also, not very enlightening? Definitely no pixies - just trees and branches and grass and ... a really ugly shed. Huh.

"Is this where you tell us you've taken up gardening?" Doubtful.

Wako Agemaki has posed:
"With hot sauce?" Wako echoes incredulously. "I mean... I get the idea," SNF "but it sounds like ruining perfectly good tea..."

Kyouka presents them with the shed. Even with the mask, it's clear that Wako's expression matches Naru's and Usagi's in its lack of comprehension. She doesn't say anything - the other two have it covered - but she looks to Kyouka as though waiting for the punch line.

Kyouka Inai has posed:
    Kyouka still looks inordinately proud of herself. "No, no, check it out. This is great. The headmistress showed it to me.. and I thought, hey, we could use this."

    She approaches the shed, glancing behind her to make sure the girls are watching and/or following. Gripping the handle of the door, she opens it to reveal... an empty, cobweb-filled, run-down wooden shed inside. She waits just a moment to let that sink in, then shuts the door again and twists the handle the opposite way.

    Pulling the door open, the view inside has completely changed. No longer a tiny, run-down shed, the group is now looking in on what looks like nothing so much as an old-style classroom. Worn, but clean, with wooden floorboards and walls and big windows letting in streaming sunlight. The front of the room has a build-in chalkboard, and the back wall is lined with cubbies. A small amount of old-style wooden desks sit scattered around in no particular order, as if the previous occupants left in a hurry.

    One odd note is that the view out the large windows appears to actually be the forest they are standing in... but walking to the other side of the shed outside reveals no windows at all.

    "Ta da!" Kyouka beams. She seems very pleased with what is, in essence, an empty room. But it is a secret empty room.

Naru Osaka has posed:
Naru doesn't look surprised when Kyouka opens the door and they find.. a dusty shed. That is after all, exactly what it looks like from the outside. It's that second opening that makes her blink and her eyes widen a little. "Ooooh."

She glances back to Kyouka and then back to the mystical hidden classroom in the forest. "Okay.. that is pretty amazing." She has to grant, taking a few tentative steps forward as if uncertain if it's a ruse or not. It's probably not. Right?

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
Usagi is preparing one of those cutting remarks teenagers are so good at (she is definitely going to figure out something cool and witty to say) when Inai-sensei closes the door, opens it again, and -

"It's bigger on the inside?!"

Forget magic lasers THIS is the real magic!!!!

Naru might be taking tentative steps, but Usagi just full on walks inside, dragging her fingers against the chalkboard, and then her eyes light up.

"Naru-chan!! Look! This is waaaay bigger than the white board in our room! "

Wako Agemaki has posed:
"Seriously?"

Wako actually moves into the doorway for a bit, leaning in and out to take in the room in contrast to the shed's exterior. "Okay, that's... actually really cool. We can use this as a meeting place, right? Instead of just hoping someone doesn't wander into whatever empty club room we're borrowing?"

She pauses, then looks toward Kyouka. "Will there be keys? We probably shouldn't count on just turning the knob the other way... there's some people out there I wouldn't trust to know which way a knob turns to begin with."

Kyouka Inai has posed:
    Kyouka looks inordinately proud of herself, despite the fact that she had nothing to do with the room's creation. "Yeah! It's... well, at this point it's basically just an empty room. But nobody is used it and nobody knows it's here. I figure we can use it as a sort of... base of operations, y'know? There's a lot of stuff going on, between Midnight Tokyo, this stuff with the Heartstealer guns, Sunbreaker, who knows what else. We need a place to consolidate information."

    "It's not much right now, but we can work on it, y'know? And you girls feel free to spread the word about it.. as long as it's to people we can trust." She glances at Usagi. "No Darien. Not yet."

    She gives a nod to Wako, though. "That's something we'll have to work on. Obviously right now the security is in secrecy. But we'll want to come up with something better, so only people who have been given access can actually get in."

Naru Osaka has posed:
"It's AWESOME!" Naru comes more fully into the room, turning around to get a grasp on all of it. "It's so much bigger than the whiteboard in our room!" She giggles softly at Usagi's point. Mostly cause it's wholly true. "And we won't have to worry about the marker wiping off every time we cover it over!"

"Having somewhere to gather information and actually sit and talk freely? Ah-may-zing!" Naru looks around and beams. "Okay.. we'll need a couple of desks, and some comfy chairs, and at least one big table. We should keep an eye out on like second hand listings, we can get that stuff pretty cheap, cause we dont' exactly need high fashion in here."

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
"A secret base to help each other out... this is awesome." Usagi is all stars in her eyes, at least until Inai-sensei mentions Darien, at which point she puffs up her cheeks and pouts. "I don't tell Mamochan everything, you know. I keep secrets!"

She does! She keeps secrets! But because she does understand the point, she doesn't argue either. She just walks around slowly, looking at everything -

"We can take some of the stuff we need from empty dorm rooms, can't we? I mean, it's school property, and this is school property, so it's not like we're stealing."

Wako Agemaki has posed:
"Empty dorm rooms don't have that much in them, though, do they? Mine sure didn't when I moved in." Wako eyes the room thoughtfully, trying out arrangements in her mind's eye. "Where does the school store extra furniture? They must have some on hand, in case something breaks... Or old stuff that they've replaced but was still in good enough shape to not just get rid of?"

Kyouka Inai has posed:
    "There's already desks here," Kyouka points out, although there are only a couple and they are very old and clearly unloved. "But we can look in storage. Not-" She eyes Usagi, "Empty dorm rooms. The whole point of this place is it's safe and secret, and if dorm furniture starts going missing eventually people are going to wonder where it's going to."

    She nods her head though, in general agreement. "I can look into spare furniture for the general stuff- desks, benches, a podium, that sort of thing. Anything more than basics we'll have to find somwhere else. But yeah.. my hope is this will become a sort of common room for mahous on our side. So we can start to maybe actually plan and work together. I wanted you three to be first to see it because I trust you, and I trust you to know who else would be good to invite. I don't mean for this to be an exclusive club.. invite anyone you think is trustworthy and on our side."

Naru Osaka has posed:
"I'm sure there's probably a storage room or an attic somewhere that has a couple of former classroom tables." Naru nods in agreement to Wako's assumption.

"I think more space is better than more stuff, at least to start." Naru looks around, trying to picture it. "Although table and some chairs would be super helpful." She beams. "Thank you, Inai-sensai."

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
"Yeah, but we should have comfy arm chairs, and like, bean bags and blankets. To really relax, you know? This is our secret base, it's going to be comfy."

It's not just a place to strategize, but a place where they could all be themselves, and know everyone in the room also knows what's up. No worrying about someone finding something out, no worrying about letting someone into their room, no white board getting wiped half clean because they hurriedly shoved the curtain back on it -

"I can definitely start telling people. Cute Wolf Tsukiko-chan, Daifuku-chan, oh, Adora-chan, she has tons of experience, and all - some - of my fellow Senshi..."

Wako Agemaki has posed:
Wako nods agreement at Usagi's opinions about 'comfy' being a necessity. "That sounds pretty good. Maybe a stash of snacks, too? I guess it'd be difficult to get a fridge up here, but..." She lets the idea go with a philosophical shrug. "I'll make sure Takuto-kun knows about it, and I can help spread the word to others, too."

Kyouka Inai has posed:
    Kyouka looks downright pleased, glancing around the room one more time. "Well, I'll let you girls plan and figure that stuff out. Just.. let's try to keep at least a degree of professionalism, huh? Comfy is fine, but this is supposed to be a workspace.. if I start hearing about ya'll hosting parties here, or turning it into a makeout spot or something, I'm gonna be annoyed."

    She grins, letting them know that while that is a serious threat, she doesn't believe these three, at least, would do such a thing. "Anyway, I gotta get back. Feel free to come and go as you please." She heads to the door, tossing a wave. "I'll be in touch." And then she's gone.