Space and time whirl around you, and you're rudely deposited on your butt on rough stone. Moments later, your Sack o' Loot (tm) lands next to you with a crunch.

[b]You have unlocked Dating missions![/b]

You kip up onto your feet like a ninja, startling a white-haired boy trying to help you up. With ninja speed, you scrutinize your surroundings. A stone statue of a guy in a suit. A running track in a grassy field. A stained white clock tower. High school. "Let's get this over with," you say, slinging your sack onto your shoulder, just as a shrill bell rings. Teenagers in beige and white uniforms swarm past you. You follow them.

Half an hour later, you can confidently say that you have learned more math than you'll ever use. The knowledge drips out of one of your ears, congealing itself into a Permanent Item, which you pick up and toss into your sack.

"Psst!" a white-haired boy in the seat behind you says. You yawn. How long is this lecture going to last?

[b]New Student[/b]
Talk to him.
		Seriously, talk to him. >

You turn and look him in the eyes. Wait, you mean his glasses. A slim pair with silver frames that reflects the sunlight from the window. He's pretty cute, you guess.

"Hey there," he says in a monotone, like he's reading off a script. He looks down, then back at you again. "You should ditch this class with me and I'll show you around the school."

[b]This is a Rolling Challenge![/b]

"You had me at 'ditch'," you say, picking up your sack in one hand and the unnamed boy in the other. You feel like you should really ask his name. "What's your name?" you say on the way out, ignoring the horrified looks of the other students in the lecture hall.

"I... uh..."

He sounds cutely flustered at being carried over your shoulder, but quickly recovers. "I'm Nara. Nara... Toru."

"I'm the Protagonist," you say, flicking your long red hair like someone in a shampoo commercial. It hits Nara on the butt. Oops. "It's nice to meet you."

You arrive at the hall door, which is closed and which you have no hands free to turn the handle with. With which to turn the handle. You shrug, and blow the door into splinters with an axe kick.

"I was expecting us to sneak out," Nara protests as you wander down a corridor looking for the sewer entrance.

"That drew a whole lot of attention!" he continues as you find a flight of stairs, and he screams as you leap down the whole flight at once, like a ninja. "From who?" you ask. He starts mumbling to himself.

"You should put me down," he suggests squeakily as you come to a door marked "SEWERS: Beware of the alligators. They will kill you. You have been warned. -Management" You can feel him trembling and clinging onto you with both arms.

"Oh, yeah. I forgot!" you say brightly, squatting down so he can get off. You didn't actually forget, you just liked carrying him. He hugs the concrete for a while. When the silence becomes awkward, you say, "You're very light for someone with my NINJA STRENGTH." You put a little emphasis on the last two words.

Genjutsu
[b]Give Nara A Moment[/b]
He's trying not to throw up.
		Difficulty: 10 Successes: 10

You are proud to say that you completely failed the check.

"So... alligators," you say, smashing in the sewer door with a roundhouse kick. Moments later, a giant set of jaws bursts through the new opening. In slow motion, you lean back, letting the glistening teeth go right over your head, then get a firm grip around the giant alligator's neck and suplex it into hard concrete. Then you fish a kunai out of your sack and jam it through its neck to make sure it doesn't get back up.

"This is, uh, the wrong place!" Nara yells in an adorably panicked way. "When I said I'd show you around, I meant to say we should go to the flower garden, and, uh, look at sunflowers or something! Safely!"

"We're already here, so we might as well have a look," you point out reasonably as you peek through the sewer door. They're surprisingly huge and clean for sewers. You don't see any more alligators, though.

"I'm not a ninja!" he protests.

"That's impossible. Everyone is a ninja." you say, picking up the biggest piece of door and trying to wedge it back into the frame. It falls right through into the water. "But if you really object that much..."

Nara nods frantically. You notice that you can see through his glasses down here, in the half-darkness.

"...we can skip ahead to the kissing part," you say breathily as you flash step right in front of him. You gaze deeply into his black eyes. His eyes are an ocean.

[b]+5 Dating Points![/b]
Oh look at the time, I -

"- have to go right nooooow..." echoes down the dark corridor from Nara's rapidly retreating back.

You lean back against the wall and feel the warm glow of success.

---

"Freeze! This is the Ninja Police!" you yell, dropping from the ceiling and landing in a crouch. The sole resident of the dorm room stares at you, poleaxed. You brandish a shuriken for emphasis. "We're claiming this room on official ninja business!" you claim, ushering him out of the door and locking it, then barricading it with a table. (You're officially a ninja, so it wasn't even a lie.)

Just as you're about to fall asleep, you hear knocking at the window. You open your eyes.

"Protagonist!" says Nara Toru.

You yawn.

"I think we might have gotten off on the wrong foot," he says. "I'd like to make it clear that I'm not a dating target."

"Oh. Can this wait till the morning?" you say.

"Also, you've taken over my dorm room."



---

[b]Introductions[/b]
Nara is not a dating target. Go with him and meet the real dating targets!
 		Meet! Now! >

"Let's go," you say, crashing through the window in a shower of glass.

"Ow! You're kind of a maniac, aren't you?" Nara says lightly.

"All ninja are like that," you retort.

He leads you through the night to a garden of sunflowers. A huge field of dusky yellow stretches between tall hedges, with a park bench in the middle. You wonder how this fits in a school. On the bench is -

"Emosuke?"

Nara coughs. "I'll just be over here," he says, absconding into a hedge.

You point rudely at Emo, who looks startled and emo in equal proportions. "I already dated you, remember? On Ninja Valentine's Day, you gave me a valentine and everything."

"I'm afraid you have the wrong person," Emosuke says, standing up. A razor blade falls out of his sleeve. He quickly steps on it, grinding it into the dirt with his heel.

"It is you!" you say, rummaging around in your sack. You pull out a stack of 15,437 emo rock CDs and hand them over to him. "Remember these?"

Emosuke stands very still, looking like someone who has just had their affection meter instantly maxed out. From what you can see in the gloom, his face seems to be filled with rapture.

"What is this feeling, stranger that I have never met?" he says. "My heart that hates the world is filled suddenly with a new emotion."

You smile at him encouragingly. "It must be lo-"

Nara tackles you from behind. "All right, that's enough, good show. Next!" he says loudly.

You frown. "Hey!" you protest. "We were -"

[b]Continue Introductions >[/b]

You sulkily follow Nara out of the garden. Behind you, Emosuke fumbles the stack and is abruptly buried in CDs.