Hi, everybody. It's been a long time, and I am really excited to be back with another story. It is my 4th for "Black Butler", and it's going to be a little silly. Not OOC-silly, or so I hope, but...well, maybe 'ludicrous' is the better word, and there's a reason why I chose 'humour' for a category. Ash and Angela will both make their appearances, so if you haven't seen the anime, this story is either confusing or a spoiler.

This said (and you're still with me, obviously intending to give it a try) - thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy!

Disclaimer: I do not own Sebastian, Ciel, Ash, Angela, Soma, Agni and/or any other characters of the series. I hold no rights whatsoever to Kuroshitsuji/"Black Butler", and I do not make money out of this.

Chapter 1: Nitwits and Spite - and Really Vicious Beasts

Ciel's carriage pulled up in front of his London town house, causing the young earl to take a deep, sighing breath. He didn't want to be here. He hadn't asked for those invitations: the get-together at the Society that was about to start in two hours, or the auction scheduled for this evening. Or this unspeakable event of collective star-gazing the day after tomorrow...

Sebastian opened the carriage door, saying something about their having arrived. The demon, at least, seemed in high spirits.

Looking forward to fulfilling Her Majesty's order, aren't you, thought Ciel. Well, with some luck and effort on your part, we'll take out that gang of art thieves tomorrow. He was walking now, walking up the steps to the door. Which leaves me with the prospect of faking interest in old shards, scientific lectures and astronomical trivialities.

Sebastian moved ahead to open the door for his master, who marched on, brooding.

So, day will be turned into night for about seven minutes. Big deal.

Sebastian stood on the threshold, transfixed, gaping at something inside the hall. It should have put Ciel on the alert. But he walked past, feeling sorry for himself. People act like they're so shocked by a little out-of-the-ordinary darkness. My days have been one endless night, since -

He froze.

'Cieeel,' cheered Prince Soma. He stormed forward to catch Ciel in an enthusiastic, brotherly embrace. Ciel recoiled, eyes wide with horror. Behind him Sebastian closed the door with an audible clunking sound. It was a clever, quick-witted move since the prince instantly remembered that he felt uncomfortable in the butler's presence, and stopped short.

His hesitation gave Ciel the first chance to grasp in fullness what he saw: Stunned, he gaped at the Indian prince. Soma was dressed in colourful silk garments embroidered with symbols of fire and flame. His bare arms were covered with intricate red and black henna designs. His eyes were rimmed with coal dust. He wore heavy earrings, that jingled softly, and a golden tiara, adorned with a gem-studded sun, gleamed on his dark hair. He cut a regal, if blindingly colorful figure. Only the cooking pot in his left hand and the ladle in his right corrupted the picture.

Ciel found his voice, 'What on earth are you up to now?'

'There'll be an eclipse of the sun,' Soma explained.

'Yes, thank goodness,' said Ciel, still aghast, looking the prince up and down. 'Looking at you makes my left eye long for darkness to fall and the other grateful for being covered anyway.'

'We need to take precautions,' Soma told him. 'We must scare away the evil spirits.'

'Evil spirits? In my hall?' Ciel's glance darted to Soma's butler Agni. He was relieved to find that the tall Indian looked his normal self.

Agni spoke up in support of his master: 'It's an old ritual. According to the legends of our home country, an eclipse is caused by the demon Rahu, who threatens to devour the sun. But he is thwarted by the gods. The sun is saved, and light is restored to mankind.'

Soma nodded with great dignity. 'And since I am a god and the only prince of India around it is my duty to make sure the affair is passed off quickly, and efficiently, and without much ado.' He put his hands to his hips and looked about like a proud warlord scanning the battlefield for enemy troops. 'Your help is very much appreciated and - '

'I didn't offer my - ,' Ciel began, crossly.

' - and I have decided to accept it,' Soma cut him off. 'Of course, ours is a dangerous mission and we cannot be sure our efforts will avail to anything. Rahu is such a powerful enemy. On the other hand it certainly won't hurt to have Ciel around, will it, Agni?'

'If you say so, Master Soma,' said Agni, bowing reverently.

Soma shoved the battered pot into Ciel's hands. 'Here, take it,' he commanded. 'Find a spoon. Make some noise.'

'Humbug! I'm too busy for such nonsense!' Enraged, Ciel flung the pot to the floor. The clattering noise was loud enough to scare away a whole haunted castle's worth of ghosts. Sebastian stopped the pot with his foot. Briskly, Ciel turned to his butler. 'Sebastian! Get me a fresh coat and then let's go.'

'Yes, mylord.' Sebastian took the pot up on his toes, balanced it there and tossed it to Agni. The Indian butler caught it just as nimbly and bowed to express his thanks.

'Sebastian! Stop playing around!'

'Yes, mylord.'

Soma looked after them as they ascended the stairs to the upper floor and Ciel's dressing room. Agni offered him the battered pot.

'So, it's only the two of us, Agni.' Soma shook his head sadly and clanked the ladle to the bottom of the pot. 'You know, I approved of the clatter when this thing rolled on the floor. That was a good, ear-deafening, demon-scaring noise.'

'It definitely was, Master Soma.'

Soma's eyes lit up with renewed vigor. 'Let's find some cobblestone.'

In the privacy of his dressing room Ciel stood before a large mirror, watching his butler in the reflection.

'A pot and a ladle!' he muttered, tipping his hat and turning a little to check his appearance in the profile. 'Scaring away an eclipse! Hah!'

Sebastian put the used coat on a hanger and said, 'It is not an unheard-of belief. In the old days, it was a wide-spread belief that an eclipse was the result of some demonic creature eating the sun.'

'Well?,' asked Ciel.

'Well what, young master?'

'You're a demonic creature. Did you? Try to eat the sun, I mean?'

Sebastian plucked a lint off the coat and smiled. 'I never gave it a thought, actually. I was too busy taking advantage of the opportunity.'

'Opportunity?'

Sebastian put the coat into the cupboard and produced a fresh one. 'An eclipse doesn't mean anything. It tends to happen, and it will pass,' he explained. 'But if you manage to spread a real plague on cue, you can drive an entire city or district to despair. It takes a lot of work and preparation to get it right, though.' He held the coat ready for Ciel to slip his arms in, smiling dutifully with his eyes humbly downcast. 'Do you know how many slugs you need to rain down on a countryside, until they crawl knee-deep?'

'Slugs? You mean frogs.'

'Slugs. Frogs are – well, they belong to someone else,' said Sebastian. 'Well, how many?'

'I don't know.' Ciel shivered.

'Nor do I. At some point you simply stop counting and start tip-toeing.'

Ciel looked down on his butler, who was on one knee, closing the buttons of his master's coat. 'I see. Was that also the point where you decided to wear a diving suit and the highest heels available with hooker boots?'

'Actually, they're not really functional wear in such an environment,' Sebastian confessed and straightened up. 'The slugs get speared, so after a few steps you're walking on squishy - '

Ciel grimaced. 'Spare me! What time is it?'

Sebastian's answer was drowned out by the clattering noise on the stairs and Soma's cheerful shouting, 'Did you hear that, Agni? Did you hear that ear-shattering noise?'

' - that okay for you, young master?' concluded Sebastian, smiling dutifully, knowing perfectly well that his master had not understood a word of the suggestions, he now asked him to confirm.

'I'm surrounded by nitwits and spite, and sometimes it's hard to decide which is which,' said Ciel, fuming. 'Let me be clear at least on this: An eclipse is nothing but the moon and the sun standing in line. No mystery, no opportunity, no – slugs. And neither I not you are going to pretend it was anything else.'

Sebastian bowed, his face unreadable. 'Yes, mylord.'

'Now, get the carriage.'

The carriage took Ciel and his butler to the Museum of the Honorable Society of Ancient History and Art. Actually, it wasn't really a musuem – or had not been for long enough to present a large collection. Like the Society itself, it had been founded only recently by a group of scientifically interested laymen, both noble and rich, and willing to buy their name a place in the history of scientific achievements and discoveries.

Their donations had enabled a certain Professor Shadwick, onetime team-mate of Heinrich Schliemann at the excavation sites of Troy, to start an expedition of his own and take a team of archaeologists into Asia Minor and Greece. And now, some seven months later, he had returned to London, bringing along a dozen crates full of prove that he had not been idle on the expenses of his supporters. It had been decided to put some of the pieces on display. Some went straight to the private vaults of the society's members. And some artefacts would go to public auction for beneficial purposes.

Ciel intended to kill two birds with one stone. He had received royal orders to track down a gang of art thiefs and smugglers, and the upcoming auction provided the bait he needed: Once it became public that the Earl Phantomhive meant to purchase an respectable number of valuable artefacts, the people he was looking for would hopefully show up. They would be easy game for Sebastian. The criminals would go to the Tower and the artefacts to Her Majesty, courtesy of the Earl Phantomhive (who felt that he already owned a lot of old stuff and had no demand for more).

Indeed, Ciel was not happy as he sat in the richly decorated room among the imitations of mural paintings, Greek columns and floor mosaics, with Sebastian on his right side and some fat company owner from Liverpool on his left. As the man kept scribbling notes, his elbow kept poking Ciel's ribs. The items that would go on auction later in the evening were presented to the potential buyers by the auctioner and commented on by Professor Shadwick himself.

The auctioner was a sturdy fellow in his fourties. He had a black moustache and a bald head, and when he praised the artefacts, his belly wobbled in time with his stentorian voice. The professor was a sinewy, small man with a grey goatee and short-sighted eyes that twinkled incessantly. His suit was too wide at the shoulders and too long in the back. He looked like he might be happier with a shovel in his hand – and he seemed particularly ill at ease with the companion Her Majesty had assigned him.

Since Queen Victoria couldn't be present herself, she had sent her butler: Ash stood beside the professor's chair, his hand on the hilt of his sword. His gaze wandered over the small crowd. Seeing Ciel and Sebastian enter, he cracked a small, sardonic smile. But then again, he greeted the entire assembly in the same detached and haughty way.

'Here we have an exceptionally well preserved image of a Troian noble woman,' the auctioner announced. People leaned forward to get a better look and made little sounds of awe and amazement.

'Sebastian,' said Ciel, warding off his left neighbor's poking elbow. His butler immediately stepped forward to check whether the small, red bowl was worth bidding for. He asked to hold it, putting a lot of demonic charm and persuasiveness in the question to make the reluctant professor comply. He raised the bowl and looked closely at the shape. He moved his finger over a small damage of the rim. He traced the outline of the design, smiling enigmatically.

'You are right to observe the intricacy of the depiction, sir,' said the auctioner. 'This noble woman is without doubt one of the most beautifully preserved paintings of ...'

Sebastian talked to the bowl: 'Helen, Helen,' he said quietly. 'Now let's speak about a job well done. Three millennia, and men still have praising words for your profile.'

Ciel froze.

'Helen,' said Professor Shadwick in a lecturing tone of voice, 'is a myth, sir. Homer tells us that her beauty was so devine that - '

'Oh, it wasn't. Not really,' said Sebastian lightly. 'Until the day of her becoming of age, she wasn't even very popular with the boys. It was her older sister who turned their heads.' Sebastian's smile turned wicked. 'On that day, little Helen threw out her army of stylists and maids in a fit of fury. She claimed that she would pay any price to him or her, who could make her outshine the other girls. Especially her older sister. And her fervent wish was received.'

People stared. Ciel was frantically raking his mind for a decent way to interfere. Why had he chosen to sit in the back? He'd have to shout his order over three dozen heads, gentlemen and ladies alike. Argh, the commotion!

'But my good man,' said the auctioner, who had begun to perspirate. 'Are you suggesting that Helen struck a deal with a demon, so she could become the cause for a devastating war?'

'Dear me, no. She was only a girl, with lots of frills and songs and romance on her mind,' said Sebastian, shrugging his shoulders. 'A determined mind, though. Of course, there would be payment.'

Commotion? Suddenly it occurred to Ciel that that was what he wanted, wasn't it? Making sure London talked about his presence at this auction. About his intention to buy -

'Enough,' said Ciel, so loud and sharply that he made the audience jump and turn their heads. 'Professor, I am the Earl Phantomhive, and I apologize for this incident! I am interested in these artefacts, and I assure you that my butler's personal opinion - '

'No, no,' said Professor Shadwick. 'It is alright. An intrigueing thought, the history of Troy founded on the quarrel of two sisters over their status in song and legend...'

People whispered.

'Well, ladies and gentleman,' interrupted the auctioner, dabbing his forehead with a hanky. Ash stood at the man's elbow, and the wickedness of his smile matched that of the demon. 'With this interesting theory to consider, maybe the time has come for a short walk in the menagerie. There are some exotic specimen our teams have brought back to London from, I daresay, all known countries – and some of the uncharted, as well.'

'Will this waste of time never stop?' moaned Ciel to himself, as he was swept along with the crowd and out into the estate's gardens.

Here, between flower beds and trimmed hedges, seaming a large, rectangular lake with goldfish in it, were cages that housed the strangest animals and plants. There were exotic birds, reptiles, rodents, and a large hairy spider that sent the ladies into fits of hysteric squeals. There were palm trees and orchids and vines. There was a cage inhabited by two black panthers, and Sebastian secretly slid his hand through the bars to pet the large cats' heads.

It would've worked, had the cat not snarled loudly with the effort of trying to sever the bones.

Looking stoically ahead, Ciel inched closer and murmured, 'Sebastian? Whatever you're doing behind your back, stop it.'

'It's only a love bite,' Sebastian whispered back.

'These are black panthers, for Go- for good order's sake! I'd appreciate if you at least tried to keep up the appearance of being human every now and then without my reminding you to!'

'Yes, master. But - ' Sebastian took Ciel by the shoulders, lifted him up, swung him around and put him down at a safe distance from the cage. 'I'd appreciate if you at least tried to stay out of trouble's reach every now and then without my coming to your rescue.' Ciel looked at the paw of the second beast that was waggling through the bars where he had stood and scolded his butler a moment ago.

Today's lesson, he thought. Never crab backwards when the next thing in your way is a panther's cage...

'Come on,' he hissed and started down the gravelled path. The party was on their way back to the main house. But they had stopped their progress and gathered under a large tree.

'Look,' said a gentleman, pointing his finger, and laughed. 'Now, what does this beast think it is?'

Ciel thought that the answer was obvious.

It was a goat.

But it wasn't just some goat, no, by no means. It was a nightmare of a goat, a big, nasty looking beast with shabby yellow fur and mighty horns that looked like fossilized ammonites. It exaggerated every characteristic of its species to the point of becoming a caricature. But the laughter, it evoked, was spiced with horror, because somehow everybody felt that it looked just too funny to be entirely true.

The beast was tied to a fenced patch of lawn which it was obviously supposed to trim but didn't. Instead it stood, returning the visitors' stares, and now it revealed long yellow teeth and let out a bleat.

People giggled, and coughed, and someone suggested, 'Let's move on.'

Following a sudden impulse, Ciel turned around: The beast was staring at Sebastian. And Sebastian was staring back. Ciel could feel the air sizzle.

Ciel had never felt anything sizzle in the air between his butler and some other creature that led to happy endings and shared pieces of chocolate cake.

Sebastian eyes started to change...

Ciel jabbed him with his elbow. 'Hey,' he whispered urgently. 'You're forgetting yourself!'

Sebastian's eyes darted to his master, the red luster gone. 'Sorry, young - '

The goat charged. The rope around its neck didn't restrict it at all, and neither did the low fence.

By the time the first warning call sounded, Sebastian had already shoved Ciel out of the beast's way and leaped straight up into the tree. The goat had changed direction and, dashing back, missed him by inches. Sebastian grabbed hold of a branch and hauled himself up.

People all around were recovering from their shock and stared at the strange scene: The goat stalked the tree like a dog, walking in circles and gazing up. Earl Phantomhive's butler lay on a tree limb, gazing down. His gloved hands clasped the wood lightly, and he had crossed his ankles over the branch for balance. His face was void of emotion, save an attentive, observant look from beneath lowered eyelids.

His master, however, had his hand gun out and trained.

'No,' called the auctioner, moving to block Ciel's aim. 'This goat is rated five shillings. Don't shoot it!'

'Then get it away from my butler!' Ciel's cold voice was drowned by a cracking, splintering noise. His eyes widened to the size of saucers. The word 'impossible' flashed on and off in his mind.

But it was really and truly happening: The goat had rammed its head forcefully against the tree, and the tree limb, although thick and solid, snapped under Sebastian's weight. And for some reason the demon failed to grab another hold and break his fall. He tumbled to the ground, turning in mid-air like a cat and landing on his feet.

The goat attacked instantly. It literally ran Sebastian over, hitting him so hard that he was whirled around and sent stumbling against the tree. He clutched a low branch with one hand and put the other against the bark, steadying himself rather awkwardly.

Ciel fired his gun. He didn't care whether he hit the demon as long as there was a chance of killing the goat. He wasn't afraid for Sebastian, of course. But no-one did this to his butler and go unpunished. No-

'Stop firing!' The auctioner grabbed his hand, forcing his gun down. 'You'll hit the man.'

'You don't understand!' Ciel struggled. 'Let go!'

As he grappled, two men – some courageous gentleman from the party and a gardener – approached the aggressive beast. The gardener grabbed it by the horns, the gentleman caught hold of the torn rope. Together, they hauled it away from its victim. It bleated, still looking at Sebastian. But it was dragged off.

Professor Shadwick and Ash hurried to Sebastian's side, the queen's butler arriving a trifle faster. The demon still clung to the tree as if he wanted to climb it but couldn't muster the strength. The smashed bone of his left leg wouldn't support his weight. There was no time for words, and, in Ash's opinion, no need, either. He grabbed Sebastian's shoulder. Sebastian reached up - 'Don't touch me!' - and gasped, as Ash kicked his heel swiftly and cruelly against the open fracture in the demon's leg. The splintered shinbone shifted back in place. The leg's owner found himself gazing at a lot of twinkling little stars in a quickly spreading black void.

'Ugh!' Sebastian flinched and reinforced his grip on the tree.

'My pleasure, said Ash, making way for the professor. The human was oblivious of the quick action and gave Sebastian a scrutinizing look. 'Easy, lad. Don't faint with pain now. The worst is over.'

Sebastian's eyes clearly told his fellow butler that the human was mistaken: As far as Ash was concerned, the worst was yet to come.

Ash smirked.

Unaware of the silent communication, the professor knelt in the mud to examine the blood-soaked trouser leg. 'Looks like it's broken. But it's a smooth, uncomplicated fracture,' he said. 'Thank goodness.'

'Thank goodness,' echoed Ash, smiling piously and folding his hands.

'Start praying,' said Sebastian between clenched teeth. He stood huddled against the tree, his injured leg slightly raised so as not to touch the ground until it was fully healed.

'Oh no,' said the professor, getting up. 'No, the wound's not that dangerous. But we should clean and bind it.' He looked assessingly at the demon's relieve posture and suggested, 'Maybe we should put some splints on.'

'Splints?' echoed Sebastian.

Ash seemed to be splitting his sides with suppressed laughter. 'Look,' he said. 'Earl Phantomhive is trying to tell you something.'

Sebastian looked his master's way: Ciel was giving him frantic signals to play along. Keep up the appearance.

'Lean on me, that's right,' said Ash, grinning and sliding his arm around the demon's waist. 'I'll get you indoors.'

Leaning on the white-clad butler, Sebastian was taken inside.

+++ End of Chapter 1 +++