House Rules, behind the scenes!

disclaimer! dgray belongs to me, only when pigs can fly me to Japan (in other words, no, I do not own dgray)

Summary: what actually happens while Reever pens down the strict rules of HQ.

Note: best read simultaneously with House Rules, by Reever Wenham (how you're going to pull that off is up to your own creativity)

The Black Order HQ, for some really odd reason, seemed to be lacking in any sort of activity that afternoon. For an even stranger reason nobody could begin to comprehend, Allen Walker was walking to the library, with Kanda Yuu in tow, instead of being busy in the canteen eating his way to a famine.

Upon entering the awkwardly quiet library, the two exorcists quickly found Reever-hanchou hunched over a simple piece of paper, scribbling down some horribly messy and illegible sentences before pausing again for a long think. "Rules", it said at the top. Allen and Kanda leaned over the man's shoulders to stare long and hard at the piece of paper and the eighteen-year-old sword-wielding male soon found a sharp pain in both his left foot and left shin as Allen kicked and stepped viciously on the aforementioined appendage, claiming that not only was Kanda taking up too much space, but was also very unfortunately blocking his otherwise pristine view of the precious sheet of paper.

In less than the time it took for Komurin to inhale a cup of coffee through its visibly nonexistant mouth, Mugen was out and was currently the only object hanging Allen Walker by the collar of his uniform to the shelf of books roughly a metre above where his head would normally be.

'Oi! Oi! BaKanda!' yelled the white-haired youth. 'Lemme down! Oi! Hey, don't go away, come back! What's he writing?' he writhed violently, mentally cursing the strongly reinforced material of the Black Order uniform.

With a sharp hissing 'SHHHH' from Reever-hanchou, who shoved the piece of paper into Kanda's face with one hand and pointed at a tiny little sign that read "silence please" on the far end of the library with the other, the offending strip of metal was yanked out from the wood and Allen fell with an undignified crash to the ground. Picking himself off the floor and dusting off, he asked, 'what'd it say?'

'What did what say?' Kanda deadpanned.

'You know, the paper.'

'It told me to put Mugen down,' he mumbled. Allen then sprung Reever with a back-breaking hug, which resulted in a new sentence on the sheet of paper that had apparently instructed him to grow up.

'I'm plenty tall,' he commented indignantly, before snatching a pen off the desk to write back to Reever-hanchou. With that, a full-out written argument had taken place on the now-terribly-disfigured sheet of rules. Glaring suspiciously at the immature behaviour of the two exorcists, especially Kanda, Reever made a mental note to check what Lavi had been doing to the soba.

Trying his best to fend off the two exorcists, Reever-hanchou pressed on. With a distant scream and mechanical clanking, he quickly penned down another line before rushing to expel the library of all coffee and then locking the doors. With a flourish of inspiration, he assigned the two restless exorcists with filling in the post-mission detail while he dredged up those particularly terrible memories of those dreadfull incidents throughout his career in the Black Order and warping them into newfound rules.

The poor, stressed out Reever-hanchou nearly jumped from his skin when Allen thrust the said delegated detail into his face. Taking the chance to scan through it, Reever was glad he had taken the time to. "Members involved: 42; Akuma destroyed: 42;" this was starting to look a little dodgy. Ignoring that fact, he looked down. "Time frame of mission: 42; Location of mission: 42;"

'Why,' Reever-hanchou hissed, almost venomously, 'does everything say "42"?'

'Don't you know?' Allen offered generously. 'According to Douglas Adams, the answer to life, the universe, and everything, is forty-two.'

'Well,' Reever-hanchou countered, 'do you see anything labelled "life", "the universe" or "everything"?'

'I thought they would come under "everything".' Meanwhile, Kanda was busily looking through the recently updated list of rules with a constipated look on his face that threatened to give way to snickers at any moment in time.

'Redo it, properly.' he growled. 'And I do not want to see any section of the entire detail containing a trace, of forty-two.'

'How about "6x9"?' Allen suggested brightly.

'No.'

A loud crash saved Reever-hanchou from any further nonsense (or so he hoped) and also seemed to save Allen from any further potential grilling he would receive from the Hanchou. On closer inspection, the cause of the slight commotion, in comparison with everything else that had happened to Reever-hanchou that morning, appeared to be Lavi on a giant hammer protruding through a crude hole in the library window that they had all just noticed.

Upon receiving multiple not-so-friendly glares from other occupants of the library, Lavi took the cue and silenced his normally talkative mouth. Instead, he swiped the pen from Kanda's hand and began scribbling on the precious sheet of paper that had started out clean that very morning. Another scuffle, not unlike the one that had taken place earlier in the day, took place as corners of the paper were shredded off and pen nibs broken while the hyperactive red-haired eighteen-year-old jabbed everyone within range in the ribs with a pen.

After some slight violence and much noise, much to the disdain of everyone who still kept the minute sign of silence please in mind, three exorcists found themselves sitting outside the library.

'Now what?' Allen glared accusingly at Lavi. 'You got us kicked out, you get us back in.'

'Alright, alright. we just have to make even more of a commotion out here than we did in the library! And then we'll get back in.' he smiled. 'I bet it'll work.'

'I bet it won't,' retorted Allen.

'How much?' the redhead seemed pretty serious about it.

'One lunch.'

'Ooh, that'll keep me alive for a week. How about you, Yuu-kun?'

'I am not Yuu-kun.'

'Alright, then. Yukkun. How much are you willing to bet?'

Throughout the process, the moans and groans of Reever Wenham, tasked with keeping the young exorcists sane and occupied without hurting anyone, could be heard. Eventually, he burst out, 'no! I will not allow betting and gambling within the HQ! Go outside, why don't you?'

Allen smiled happily. 'Lunch, Lavi. Thanks.'

'Yes, yes. But we all still want to get in, don't we?' he persuaded. 'Get a pink shirt, and some purple hair dye. If we manage to convince Reever-hanchou that Touya Akira would like to challenge him to a game of Go...'

'But I don't know how to play Go.'

'Then if we tell him Tieria Erde needs some help going back to Celestial Being he might just let us in, right?'

'No I won't!' cried a muffled voice from beyond the door. 'Get lost!' Lavi instantly took this as the cue to lose his mind, and whipped Mugen from Kanda's waist.

'Ha-HA!' he yelled. 'Take me to No. 66! I. AM. YOUR. FATHER!' his words echoed through the vast space that HQ took up.

'No! Calm down, will you?' Reever's face finally appeared as he peered around the then unlocked door.

'Then let us in,' suggested Kanda.

With a longsuffering sigh, Reever-hanchou opened up the door and let the three other males enter the library. He then sat himself back at the table and, cradling his head in one hand, continued crafting more rules out of nasty experiences in the past. He sighed again. The list had increased exponentially, and so did his wrinkles, as the three exorcists continued to wreak havoc upon the library and its unfortunate occupants.

They seemed to particularly like sending someone to the top of a ladder before tilting the bottom, oh-so-slightly and eliciting screams and yells from the unfortunate soul perched near the ceiling. With an unexpected long period of silence, an earth-shattering collision shook the pen out of Reever-hanchou's hand, and the man himself, out of his chair.

'Can you guys sit still?' the exasperated tone was clear in Reever-hanchou's voice.

'Can you?' by now Kanda, too, seemed a little more out of it than what he had begun with.

'Hey, Reever-san,' Allen called out from beneath the rubble of what used to be books and a ladder. 'Write something about how forcing people awake is illegal.'

Draped over Reever-hanchou's shoulders, Lavi suggested, 'how about "no hopping on one leg while standing in the toilet bowl"?'

'No. Get off me.'

'No can do! Try "do not lick the floors".'

'No. Why don't you guys go bother Komui-shitsuchou or someone else?'

'Alright!' Lavi sprung energetically to his feet, grabbing Tessei on his way.

'Wait!' shouted Reever-hanchou, completely ignoring the little sign that pleaded for peace and quiet. 'New rule, give me that.'

'Give you what?' Allen questioned innocently.

'Tessei. The hammer.' At this, Lavi flew to the sheet of paper and was, within seconds, scribbling madly away and fighting Reever-hanchou for the last remaining pen in the library that still had a nib.

There was a short reprieve as the three young exorcists found themselves, once again, out of the library. Without missing a beat, Lavi the ringleader was already putting more mischief into action. 'Yuu-kun?'

No response.

'Yukkun?'

Silence.

'Kanda!'

'What?' came an irritable reply.

'Can we dye your hair yellow?' Lavi seemed well-armed in the hair dye department today.

'Over my dead body.'

'How about sleeping body? It's close enough, isn't it? Come on...'

'No!' resounded two voices.

'Ah. I have a supporter,' smiled Kanda at the closed, and most likely locked tight, library door.

'Oh well, then. Back to Plan A,' Lavi smiled once again. 'Moyashi-'

'I'm Allen!'

'Yeah, yeah, whatever you say. Take out your shoes.'

In no time three teenaged exorcists were sliding around wearing only socks on their feet, smashing periodically into either each other, the corridor banister ("Oh, so that's what they're for") and most often, the library door. By luck or unpredictable misfortune on Reever-hanchou's part, the poor man had opened the door to silence the chaos only to have them smash headlong into him and slide straight into the library. Another quick analysis had Reever-hanchou back at the table with the highly-coveted pen scribbling away once more before his train of thought got de-railed once more by sliding idiots on socks.

Once that was accomplished, he turned to face the source of all problems ever since the day had started. 'Seriously-'

'No,' Allen interjected.

'No what?' the Hanchou asked tiredly.

'Not Sirius Lee. Sirius Black.'

Reever couldn't help but drop his head into his hands. 'Are you serious,' he muttered darkly into his hands. But apparently, not softly enough as Lavi quickly returned another cheeky quip.

'No! He's dead, remember? He died in the,' here he paused to count off his fingers. 'Fourth book,' he declared with confidence.

'Fifth book,' Kanda deadpanned once more. 'He didn't even appear in the Fourth book.'

Reever-hanchou sighed once again. Just as one problem was about to resolve itself, Lavi would, of course, present another. 'Oh, never mind then,' the slightly mad redhead pronounced. 'Anyway, I have a slight problem here. You see this?' at this, he held out a small card with his own picture printed on it with a pair of rather well-drawn rabbit ears protruding from his head in black marker. 'I think it's a crime. And I think it warrants detention and gets you nine demerit points in school.'

'Maybe,' Reever-hanchou suggested, 'if you kept your things more carefully and behaved more like an eighteen-year-old, this wouldn't happen. Now please leave me alone as I relive those dreadful disasters and complete this insane list.'

'Maybe,' Allen piped up from his oddly long silence, 'if we re-enacted those "dreadful disasters" then it would be more realistic and then your job would be so much easier!'

'No way. Hey! I thought we got over the whole Pokéball thing already!'

'This one's new,' Kanda explained.

'It bounces!' Allen filled in excitedly.

'No,' the tired blond man moaned as he was assaulted from all sides by the revolutionary bouncing Pokéballs.

At that moment, the library door creaked open and Lenalee stepped in, skilfully avoiding a speeding Pokéball. 'Reever-san?' she called out.

He groaned inwardly. 'Yes?'

'You know, the other day, Nii-san created this powder?'

The sinking feeling Reever-hanchou was experiencing was quickly changing from sinking to plunging. 'Yes?'

'The one that was supposed to give you more energy and increase your attention span?'

The memories all came flooding back now. It probably all startet the time when the entire Science Department had complained to him about the work overload and the lack of energy they were very unfortunately experiencing. 'Yes?'

'It's gone missing, and we were thinking, by any chance, have you seen it?' she asked innocently.

'I think it's a little too effective,' he mumbled. 'I think it's somewhere back there being digested,' he grunted as he jerked a thumb to the back of the library where a bouncing putty fight was being staged.

Author's note: congratulations! You made it to the end. For that, you get a virtual hug! How was it? If you made it here you either were entertained to no end, or you hate it with a fiery passion. Either way, tell me what you think! When the opportunity presents itself, I'd really like to do an illustration of the last scene. If you're the patient kind of person, you'll see it appear on DA sooner or later, though I'd put my money on "later". Thanks for following me here! (eek, it sounds so stalker-ish.) Reviews help! (hinthint)