Author's Note: I've been meaning to set something up similar to Arcadia and this is what I got. I like it a lot and I actually have an ending in mind.
If I get more than two reviews, I will promise on my life never to give up this story and update it EVERY week. Unless my internet goes off, but I can assure you that it will be up as soon as possible. Unless I die... and well, I'm sorry if that happens. I'll be really sorry.
Summary: The four Orbs of Hell are the Elements of Earth. They reside in four boys and will mature when they turn eighteen. When that happens, the power will be theirs. However, three demons get close to them, for the orbs and other reasons, and will make sure that doesn't happen.
Pairings: I'm all traditional about yaoi pairings and all, but this story, I decided to mix it up. At first it will be 6x9 and 5xMeilan, then it will be 13x6x5, 4x2 (yea, crazy, huh?) and 1x3 (freakin' weird). You'll love it.
Warnings: There are some elements of rape and mental illnesses. I don't condone rape and I am a full believer in the importance of understanding mental illnesses. However, I don't know much, so I'm sorry if my situations aren't typical or realistic.
I took three years of German in high school and remember quite a bit. However, that doesn't make me an expert, though I must admit I'm a pretty good translator of German to English. I greatly encourage amateur and expert German reviews. It will be fun. :D
Another Note: The title of each chapter is actually the POV of the character. At first it will be mostly demonic scions (I'll explain what that means later in the story), and the incubus (which will take a slightly different persona in my story) will be later.
Enjoy.
Milliardo
It was stunningly clear to me that this incubus had occurred a hundred times before, and I still hadn't gotten over it. It came with the violent brilliance of a nightmare ill-received. I was frightened to death. I still feared the situation. I was just as helpless as all the times before. The man was back.
I awoke to my alarm tinkling softly in my ear. Long ago, my mother and father had thrown away the screaming alarms that sounded like electric ducks because those alarms were just too similar to those in my nightmares. The sound would send me into shock whether I was on my drugs or not. Plus, my psychiatrist recommended it. Still, I contemplated whether or not to tell her, or my parents for that matter, that an un-triggered nightmare had happened again. But then they would put me on meds again. The school doesn't allow you to fence if you take medication for mental aid. If you had AIDS, fine. Bipolar psychopath? Try chess. You weren't waving around a razor-sharp sword.
So I opted, against the better judgement of my good conscience, to not tell anyone about the nightmare. I got dressed in my uniform that I had ironed the night before, making sure to button up over my collarbone, straightened and brushed my hair, brushed my teeth, and had a bowl of cereal for breakfast. My mother came in, smiling.
"Ready for your last year of school?" she asked, the wrinkles around her mouth crinkling those bags underneath her eyes, so that they smiled too. She was beautiful.
"I'm ready for every year of my life, mother," I answered, as I said every year. My bowl swirled in the sink and I gave my mother a kiss on the cheek.
With the tiniest bit of suspicion, she inquired, "Why are you up so early?"
"I'm excited. I have a new German teacher first period. Heard- hopefully she's a she- she was foreign. And you know how much I love foreign older women." I wiggled my eyebrows for effect as mother swatted my lips and laughed.
"Don't let Noin hear you say that."
"Don't tell her, okay?"
Mother laughed again, and I left after that. My sister Relena wanted to ride the high school bus the first day of school, so I was granted the Jetta all to myself. I caressed the empty passenger seat, imagining it was Noin's supple thigh. We could have the car to ourselves this afternoon, but if anyone saw us at school, it would be the scandal of our elite community. Our since-birth engagement would probably be called off, and I will never see Noin again. For lack of better words, that would suck.
I didn't have to ride this early. School wouldn't start for another twenty minutes, the doors open in ten, but the edges of the nightmare still pricked my mind and concentrating on driving really helped things. I should really get back on my medicine, but starting it up again would mean going through the inital effects once more. The tiredness, the sleepiness, the vague looks, the lack of interest in anything. It was disheartening and people could tell when you're on some heavy meds, and definitely when you're off. I just didn't want to go through all that again.
It was 6:55 when I arrived at school. The doors will open in five minutes. Barton Academy has been up since the ancient times, but, though I've been going to this prestigious school for the last three years, I didn't know much else about it. But I did know that the principal's niece, who graduated last year, and nephew, who was a senior like me, were both lookers in their own special way. But the Barton kids were so much smarter than I was, all Honor classes and AP schedules, so I never really saw them.
Wishing to be alone for awhile, I stayed in my car and watched the other teenagers play football and frisbee in the Autumn morning. The buses were coming in on the other side of the school. The bells rang and, like clockwork, everything stopped and headed towards the doors, a river of white T-shirts with khaki and navy blue fish flooding the interior of the school. The buses, filled to the brim, emptied their contents onto the sidewalk. I saw Relena come out with her friends at the front of the school. I straightened my hair, grabbed my books, and headed towards the doors myself.
The German classroom has never changed all the years since I've been here. I took German last year, and knew the classroom both years before then. I had learned absolutely nothing. The teacher was old and could always, always be persuaded to have a Culture Day in which we would bring German food- no, we actually did bring German food, surprisingly- and eat and watch a movie. She would tell us stories of her poor childhood in Germany and the differences between American and German society. We loved her a lot. She died this past summer, and everyone in our class brought our favorite German meals to her funeral. We were...very guilty when her relatives began speaking simple German to us and we couldn't understand them. Only the repeated du, du, du or you, you, you was what I understood.
The classroom hadn't changed location, but it sure had a makeover. Our artwork, because the old German teacher loved our art whether it was German or not, was hanging from the ceilings except on the wall. What replaced them were many pictures of Germany- Berlin, the Fairy Tale Castle, a shot of a car on the Autobahn, German Cars, German royalty, and many aphorisms in German with translations at the bottom. Even comic strips were in German: Garfield, Peanuts, and Dilbert. At the back of the class were the Grimm Brother's tales books, which I heard on the grapevine were much scarier than the Disney renovations. Distractedly, I scratched my collarbone, and immediately ceased the action and looked around to see if anyone saw me. I know it was sort of stupid, because everyone scratches their collarbone, but I had a secret under there almost as dire as my nightmares, and I definitely didn't want anyone to know. Fortunately for my sorry-ass paranoia, there was no one around.
At least, that was what I thought.
"Guten Morgen, Milliardo Peacecraft."
I turned around so fast I hit my shoulder, hard, on the bookcase. The muscle under there jumped as if someone had frogged me. My view was totally taken up by a tall, dreadfully handsome man with strange-colored blue eyes and ginger-red hair. He smiled genially while offering his large hand covered in jeweled rings. Around his neck hung a tiny key with a swirling looking blue color. It almost looked like my... Well, that didn't matter. I shook his hand.
"How did you know my name, Mr..?"
He frowned. "When I say good morning, you shall say Guten Morgen, Herr Kushrenada, understand?"
I could already tell I wasn't going to bullshit through this class like last year. "Yes, sir."
"Guten Morgen."
"Guten Morgen, Herr Kushrenada."
"Gut, gut. Wie geht's?"
I had no idea what he said. Let me tell you how far we went with German class. We learned du and Ich and all the curse words. Other than that, I couldn't remember a thing. I stared at him blankly before telling him this. On his masculine face, the frown deepened, and he rolled his eyes, and said something in German.
"Uhm..?"
"I said," he sighed, passing a hand over his face to hide the fact that he was looking me up and down, "that it was worse than I thought. It was her last year, no?"
"Yes, sir. But...She also died so..." I finished that thought like that. He was still roaming his eyes over me and I was starting to feel nervous. The last time a man, granted he was old, looked at me that way I ended up a month and a half in a mental institution and taking meds for three years. So you can understand why was I starting to feel a bit antsy. He suddenly looked into my eyes, so I just had to look away. I looked back and he was directly in front of my face.
"We're going to get to know each other very well, meine Liebe. You are going to be my top student," he said, and he grinned maliciously. I wanted to call for help. There was no way I would be his top student, not with Chang Wufei in fifth period, who, rumor has it, studied the German book on Culture Days. And the way he smiled at me... It made me shudder.
"And I'll break that nasty fear out of you as well."
What the hell did he mean by that? How did he know I was fucking scared of him? Maybe he looked at my records- but I thought they were private. My mother and I signed a form and everything. He was walking away, looking at me out of the corner of his eyes. I suddenly felt as safe in school as a rat in a cobra pit.
"Setzen Sie hin, bitte," he said, pointing at a desk in front of him. It was bolted to the wall and a bit off from the other rows. It was all by itself, and the nearest desk to Mr. Kushrenada's.
"I don't want to sit there." But he gave me a look that was saying, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to give you a choice in the matter. The only other teacher to give me that look was my fencing teacher, and so I closed my lips and sat down at my seat that he gave me. He started straightening things on his desk and I watched. I could go out looking for Noin, but I sort of felt as if I would have to ask permission, though class hadn't started yet.
The bell rang for the first time, which meant people should start going to classes. The second bell in five minutes would mean a tardy. Luckily, Noin was the first one to arrive. She saw me, and I got up automatically to take her hands, pull her to me, and gave her a kiss.
"Excuse me, no public displays of affection," Treize told us, arms folded over each other and looking for all the world like one of the adminostrators.
Noin snorted, "It's just a peck. Who the hell are you?"
"No profanity either, Frauleine Noin. And I'm Herr Kushrenada."
"Your first name is her?"
"Herr," Mr. Kushrenada repeated, rolling the r's visibly. He was looking a bit irritated now, but he asked for it. If you get on Noin's nerves, she'll get on yours as well, no matter if she was wrong or right. "You should remember that it means Mister."
Noin laughed, sitting in the nearest desk to mine, though it was still about two feet away. "I didn't learn anything last year."
"This year, you'll learn everything you need to know," Kushrenada promised, examining her and glaring at me. No, he didn't like her at all, and I bet he was wondering why I liked her. I would have answered that it came naturally after my parents told me nine years ago that I was engaged to her, and that in the June following my eighteenth birthday we were going to be married. At first I was the immature kid and said she had cooties and all, then I realized how much fun girls were when you dated them, and how soft they were, and how light their voices were. And Noin was the closest girl so why not date her for four years?
"What a bastard!" Noin exclaimed when Kushrenada temporarily left the room. At least, again, that's what I thought, but he popped right back in, pulled out a slip of paper, and wrote something on it. He then handed it to Noin. On it was a citation for detention.
"On the first day of school!?" she yelled at him. "I have a hair appointment."
"If I could only tell you how much I don't care," he answered.
"You just did."
"Well, then. Unless your boyfriend here would like to replace you, I will see you at 2:45 sharp. Then we'll be such friends until four." Treize grinned at me, as if he had planned this for days and finally seen the diabolical task come into fruition. Of course I would replace her, and it was not because she gave me those begging watery eyes of a girl whose heart's been torn. She bit her full lower lip and shook the jagged edges of her bangs out of her eyes. I suddenly thought that she did need to get her hair done.
But I didn't want to be alone with Mr. Kushrenada for an hour and fifteen minutes! I'll tell Relena to have mom get me early. Mom was a wonderful negotiator.
"Sure," I said.
In the next three minutes other students came in, the river of uniforms flowed. Noin thanked me numerous times while the seats filled up and the noise level reached the maximum limit about our new German teacher and the new German classroom. They said hello to Noin and me, and a couple of guys from the fencing class gave me high fives. When the tardy bell rang, the announcements came on, but I wasn't listening. The teacher was busy staring at me, and feeling uncomfortable, I fought hard to stare at Noin to ignore his staring. But the only way to ignore his staring would be to know that he was staring, which would seemed to be the opposite of ignoring. So maybe if I pretended to ignore him, he'll stop staring. No such luck.
"Why is he staring at you?" Noin asked finally, giving Kushrenada a mean glare. He flicked out another citation for detention, so she turned her head back to me, waiting for an answer.
"I don't know."
"He's a freak, I tell you."
The announcements went off, and Mr. Kushrenada started talking: "Hello, class, I'm Treize Kushrenada. You will address me as Herr Kushrenada, understand?"
Someone raised their hands.
"I'm not taking questions," he boomed, looking at the boy sternly. "And I said, understand?"
"Yes, sir," we answered collectively. Some people grumbled under their breaths. Of course, Treize took out his citations.
"These are detention slips. Who wants one?" No one said anything. "Then be quiet. Ich bin ihren Lehrer. Did any of you understand that?"
One person said, "We didn't learn any German last year. We partied." The class laughed, except for me. I wasn't in the mood to laugh when the teacher looked like he was about to have an aneurysm. He grabbed a ruler from the whiteboard and smacked it on my desk. I think everyone jumped.
"That is not funny. That teacher is an idiot for letting a whole year of Deutsch go to waste."
"Hey," Noin reprimanded, "She's dead!"
"Entschuldigung. Was an idiot."
"You're horrible!"
"That's your opinion. And thank you for volunteering to pass out this week's vocabulary list. Milliardo, you will pass out last year's book's Vokabeln section. I expect all of you to know most of the vocabulary I'm giving you by next week."
Noin got up, marched to the teacher's desk, and snatched the vocabulary. "You know, we have other classes too. What if we can't learn all the vocabulary?"
"Then you'll fail," he said, giving me the heavy stack of the German One book's vocabulary section. He continued talking as Noin and I passed out the papers. "I'm here to teach German and you're here to learn it. The only way you'll pass is if you learn what I teach. Understand?"
"Yes, sir."
"However, I could care less if you pass, and I will congratulate you if you do. You fail, it's because you didn't put in enough effort. You put in the effort, I will make sure you pass. Those of you that know more German than the next person but don't do the work will do more poorly than the earnest person next to you that doesn't know as much German. I will make sure of that," he promised. "For my class you will need paper and writing utensils, of course, and a notebook for taking notes. I will grade your notebook to see how hard you are working. The better your notebook, the better your grade. That notebook is fifty percent of your grade, while tests are thirty, quizzes fifteen, and homework five. Most quizzes will be vocabulary while tests will mainly cover grammar lessons. Homework will be a combination of the two, understand?"
"Yes, sir," we said obediently. Noin and I were finished, and we sat down. This class wasn't as hard as my Algebra Two class, whereas the teacher only gave us quizzes and tests. And the quizzes only had five questions. God, how I hated that class.
"Any questions?" Treize asked.
Noin raised her hand and Treize nodded towards her. "Are we going to have projects? Like, for extra credit?"
"No. None of you have sufficient vocabulary in this subject to do projects on."
"But we can't do paperwork all year."
"Yes, you can." Treize smiled. "However, if I see a significant upsurge of workmanship among you, then I might change my mind. Now, for the rest of the class you will learn the vocabulary how you learn best. On the first page of your notebook, write of that strategy. Make sure you date each page of the notebook you write on."
In my notebook I wrote how I like to write each word ten times each and then test myself over the words, but this time I was only going to write them five times each, because one hundred times ten equals me not doing that much fucking work. I began writing vocabulary words down and was surprised to see how many words resembled English words, like sie was she (and also they, and also a formal way of saying you, which all confused me) and Apfel was apple, et cetera. I realized that most of the words were just easy words that we really should have remembered from the minimal lessons we had last year.
I felt his eyes on me the whole time.
Lunch rolled around without anything special happening, except that this one kid was put in in-school suspension for not giving up his cell phone, which he was using right in the middle of English class. I saw Relena waiting for the long lunch line to go down, sitting with her friends. Giving little attention to my fencing friends, I made my way to her table and sat in front of her. She gave me a surprised smile.
"You know, in my music class, the upperclassmen were all like 'look at all these freshmen'. And here is a senior sitting right as the same table as me!"
I laughed. "Please, the same people that say that are the ones that felt like crap being freshmen last year because those sophomores treated them like that, and those sophomores treated them like that because they were freshmen the year before that one and were treated badly by that year's sophomores."
"Wait," she said, smiling, "Wouldn't that be your class?"
"Let's just say it's an unending cycle."
"Anyway, what do you want? I know you didn't sit by me because you just love your younger sister oh-so-much."
"I need you to tell mom I'm in detention. Noin kept cursing at the teacher and he initially gave her the citation, but I decided to take her place because of her hair appointment."
"How nice of you."
"Will you tell mom?" I asked, ignoring her comment.
"Yes, yes."
I thanked her and went to my fencing buddies. I asked them when the first practice was going to be because I missed announcements, and they told me conditioning will start next Friday. That was good, because then that wouldn't interfere with me studying for German Two, Government, and English vocabulary. Yes, they all gave me vocabulary. I was taking PreCalculus the next period and my last period was Home Economics, which was a bullshit class because the minimum classes a senior could have was five. It was the easiest out of art and music, but it was also filled with girls. It hardly did any damage to my reputation because I was in fencing, so my friends knew I was taking it because I was lazy.
Too quickly, school ended, and I was making my way back to the German class to Herr Kushrenada.
"Guten Tag, Herr Peacecraft. Wie geht's?" he asked as soon as I walked in. When I tried to sit down, he gestured to me to remain standing. I stayed standing, suddenly nervous as he closed and locked the door.
"Guten Tag, Herr Kushrenada. Umm... Es ist gut." I answered the best way I can. He had asked me 'how goes it' or something and I replied 'it is good'.
"Sehr gut." Very good. "You studied well. Now, take off your shirt."