Although it was six thirty, the debate still hadn't begun. Sebastian was beginning to get impatient. He needed to prepare his masters dinner soon, and clean up the other servants attempt at replacing him, as they surely would do in the time he had been away. But it had been a while – half an hour, to be exact – and the debate was only just beginning. The problem was the teacup. It appeared to have an inner need to make everything a tad more difficult than necessary.
The teacup began the debate by saying, "What if we mix this up a little?"
Sebastian didn't like the sound of that. The only thing he liked mixing up was his master's tea. The red reaper was already facing him in a debate – surely that would be enough craziness to satisfy the strange little teacup thing for a while?
It appeared not.
"Oh, yes. What did the reviews say?" There was a pause while the cup flicked through her notes. "Right. A Sock Bandit asked if you two could fail at debating. Like, agreeing with each other."
"But Sebas-chan and I always agree! Except, you know, about – well, everything. And what do you mean, a sock bandit? I don't wear socks. Ladies wear tights." Grell said, wriggling his hips. " Funny, Sebastian had managed to forget Grell was in the room. His skin tickled with the irritation boiling beneath it.
"No – not a real sock – oh, whatever. I'm getting confused already. Okay, the debate is called, "Work or play" and I think that in order to get people's attention -" The teacup began, only to be cut off by Sebastian.
"What people?" Said Sebastian.
"I'll be recording everything that will be said in the debate, and there is a chance people will read it later in time. In order to, um, make the debate interesting, we should have a team switch. Typically, relying on your personalities, Sebastian would be arguing that work is better than play, and Grell would argue the opposite."
"Couples really shouldn't argue, you know, teacup-thingy," Grell began again.
"We're not a couple -"
"And I'm not a teacup-thingy." Finished Ella. "Where was I? Oh yes. So normally, Sebastian would argue that work is better than play, and Grell vice versa. Today," She paused for effect, "Grell will argue that work is better than play, and Sebastian will argue that play is better than work. I'll record everything."
"What!" (Normally, the word "what" has a question mark after it, but in this case, Grell shouted it so loud, an exclamation mark was the appropriate punctuation.) Grell shouted. Even Sebastian looked confused and a little annoyed. The teacup only shrugged, which was a little disturbing. (It did this by raising its handle upwards so that it was resting near its brim, then lowering it again, which caused an awkward scrapie sound, like teeth running against the edge of a plate.) This shocked both the immortals into silence, giving the teacup time to speak.
"I know, it sounds like a challenge – but there is an upside." She paused for effect. "Both of you," here there was another dramatic pause, which was getting on Sebastian nerves. Couldn't the crazy cup just tell him what humiliations he had to pass through? Finally she finished with, "get to choose partners from the remaining Black Butler characters."
A note from the teacup. (Author)
So, another chapter. Thank you to Sock Bandit, for the idea of mixing the two ideas up, and to me, for being a genius. And a teacup. Most teacups tend to be geniuses, actually. I haven't met any others, you see. And the ones that I have met don't talk very much - and they don't seem to mind when people use teabags on them instead of tea leaves. (It's disgusting. Its like . . . it's like getting a mouth full of cotton when you were expecting a marshmallow. Horrible.)
I'm getting off topic. In the next chapter, we shall have two surprise guests - feel free to guess or suggest them to me in the reviews - and lots of arguing, and hopefully the pace of the story should pick up a little.