"The desk is less than ten feet behind you," Natsumi pointed out, but she took the folder anyway. It wasn't like she needed to run upstairs to skin out of rumpled civvies and into uniform, anyway. Her scrolls were already packed in her hip-pouch, her mask clipped to her belt. "You're signed up for this already, I take it. Can you meet me in the lobby in fifteen minutes?"

He tapped his right fist to his heart, an unfamiliar gesture that resembled nothing so much as a salute, and strolled off up the hall. Natsumi watched the way broad shoulders worked under wrinkled cloth for just a moment before she headed into the Mission Office to add her name and registration number to mission B-75-0322-003.

Interesting certainly seemed appropriate.