I don't own Kuroshitsuji.

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Chapter 2

I wasn't sure when I passed out, but when I awoke I was lying on the floor in an expensive looking room. And, of course, I wasn't alone. At the other end of the room, as far away from the door as possible, Ciel lay on the ground. He was tied up just like I was, but he got more attention then I got. A man was standing before him and from what I could see, the man was wearing a white suit and had blond hair. And he sounded like a complete asshole.

'"The order of England's underworld". One of the "villainous nobles" that have assumed the bad-guy role for the royal family for generations. "The Queen's guard dog" who uses his absolute power to bite to death anyone who opposes her… Just how many nicknames do you have? And how many royal families have you crushed, Ciel Phantomhive?'

That was the moment when Ciel looked up, revealing his face full of little wounds. 'I thought it was you, Azzurro Vanel of the Ferro family!' he said, no fear or pain in his voice. I had to admit, that kid was pretty strong.

'Say, little Phantomhive, it's though for the Italian Mafia in this country,' The man, Azzurro, said, as if it would explain anything.

I tried to understand their conversation, but clearly I was missing way too much information. I guessed this man, Azzurro Vanel, kidnapped Ciel for money and because he was a child, he was an easy target. But he didn't look like he needed money. Neither did this place.

'All these Englishman have tea-encrusted brains,' Azzurro continued.

Okay, that was just hypocrite and so not true. I tried to move, but I was not only tied up, but also tied to the ground, so that I couldn't even move. I also didn't want to make any big movement, because no one paid attention to me now and I would like to keep it that way. Sorry, Ciel.

I looked at the men standing by the door. They were all dressed in black. Okay, so stupid blond guy was probably the leader.

'People in the family business like us have to use our brains to come up with smart ways to make money,' Azzurro said, closing in on Ciel and kneeling down so that he could look him in the eye. This action caused me to lose sight of Ciel. 'And that's exactly what drugs are for.'

Oh, God. I hated this man more and more every second he spoke.

'In the Pharmacy Act of '68 even opium was listed as restricted.' Ciel sounded still calm and composed as he spoke and it started to worry me. Which kid acts like that when he gets kidnapped by such a scary bunch of men? 'The Queen has ordered me to not let the vermin or the drugs run wild anymore.'

Wait, what? Did the Queen, as in the Queen Queen give Ciel orders? Or was it just a code name? In any case, why the hell would anyone order him to do such a thing? Sounds kind of dangerous. And I think there are more professional people to follow that kind of order.

Azzurro sighed. 'Aaah! This is why I hate Englishmen! The Queen this, the Queen that… You're all a bunch of stupid mama boys when it comes to your Queen.' He started to sound more and more angry the more he spoke. 'You try to line your own pockets while you bind us with rules… But we're birds of a feather, aren't we? Let's get along.' He'd grabbed Ciel's face and held it close to his. Yikes.

'I've left orders for my servants,' Ciel bluffed, still calm, 'to give your storehouse key to the authorities if I don't come back.' Liar. I knew he hadn't. But that meant that Azzurro probably knew, too. Unless he'd told them before I arrived, but that would mean he knew he'd be attacked. 'Sorry, but I have no intention of becoming friends with a filthy rat like you.'

I gasped when Azzurro straighten himself and pointed a gun at Ciel's face. I wasn't even sure where he'd got the gun from, but it terrified me more then everything that had happened before this. Oh, God, this is serious.

'Don't you underestimate an adult, you damned brat!' he shouted. 'I already have my men waiting at your estate.' Well, yeah, we knew. We were there, remember? 'Where's the key? Spit it out fast, or I'll kill your servants one by one.'

Oh, God. Oh, God, Oh, God. I should've just gone home. Why did I go and check on Ciel? I barely knew him!

And then, the strangest thing happened.

Ciel smiled.

He smiled?!

First off, I had never seen Ciel smile, so that looked really, really weird. But stranger was the situation. Was it something to smile at? Ciel turned his head a little and spoke with the same, strange smile on his face: 'You'd better hope your little lap dogs know how to fetch.'

Wham!

Azzurro had kicked Ciel in his face, making him fall over. I screamed, but still no one looked at me. I guess they knew I wasn't a threat. Just a silly little girl who happened to be at the wrong time at the wrong place. Which was one hundred percent true, of course.

I couldn't do anything. I couldn't help him. I just had to watch how Ciel laid there on the ground. Blood was dripping down his face, but I wasn't sure where it was coming from.

Azzurro grabbed his mobile phone and called someone. 'Negotiations are down,' he said harshly. He put the phone away after that and in the silenced that followed I could only imagine what would happen to Sebastian, or the helpless maid. Gosh, Ciel's house had been so big, there must've been hundreds of people working there. Were they all going to die?

The silence was awful, but when I looked at Ciel, I saw that he didn't even look a bit worried. Did he have that much trust in his employees? Or was it just that he didn't care?

It was Azzurro's phone that broke the silence. When he picked it up, his face went from angry to infuriated. 'Messed it up?!' he screamed into the phone.

I was sure that 'messed it up' meant something positive for us. But it surely wasn't enough to celebrate.

'You useless fools! This is the problem with scum like you… Forget it! Just get back here!' he looked angry, but after he while his expression changed. Did his mood just change from angry to… worried? 'What's with you guys? Did you attract to much attention?' A pause. Then his face went worried to panic. 'Cut it out already!...'

Then a scream, so loudly even I could hear it, came through the phone. What the hell was going on? Who attacked Azzurro's employees? And why? Were they trying to save Ciel?

'H-hey… what happened?' Azzurro asked, clearly receiving no answer.

And then, since he's timing was apparently messed up, Ciel started laughing. As if someone made a joke. As if those people who were on the phone just a minute ago did not presumable die. 'Sounds like your game of fetch failed,' he said, as if he was the villain.

Oh boy, that boy was messed up.

That didn't mean that it was fun to watch Azzurro beating the crap out of him. It was the first time I could hear Ciel make sounds of pain.

I closed my eyes the moment Azzurro shouted: 'Quiet, you damn brat!'

I only dared to open my eyes again when he sound of beating and Ciel's small cries stopped. 'Hey if you don't answer me right now, I swear I'll kill you guys!' Azzurro said, talking into the phone again.

Dang, idiot, you can spare the trouble, I presume that someone else has already killed whoever was on the other end of the phone for you.

Then there was a huge change in his face. I thought that I'd seen him look worried, but I'd been wrong. Now he looked worried. As if he had seen the devil, no, heard the devil through the phone.

If only that were the case, I thought, starting to wish for a miracle.

Azzurro started to shake, he opened his mouth, but there were no words coming out of it. Whoever was on the phone now, he or she freaked the guy out.

'Woof,' Ciel said suddenly, his head facing the wall and his back facing me and the rest of the room. Okay, so he lost it, too, then. Good to know that this sort of situation does indeed affect him.

I wasn't sure if it was Ciel's 'woof' or the person on the other side of the phone, but Azzurro seemed to lose it too. He look scared to death. He put his phone away and turned towards the other men in the room. 'The Phantomhive guard dog is going to burst in here!' he screamed, totally not making sense any more. Whose dog was about to burst in? 'Tighten the security! Don't even let a single rat in here! Don't let him set even one foot inside!'

The silence that followed was unbearable. I didn't understand a single thing that was happening, the only thing I could understand was that Azzurro had gone cuckoo. He walked restlessly through the room, cursing, shouting, sometimes kicking Ciel just because he could.

We could all hear it when it started. The gunshots outside the room, the loud sound of screams and things falling. I repeatedly heard the sound of something breaking… glass maybe?

That was the moment that Azzurro pointed his gone towards the door.

We all heard the footsteps drawing closer, but it didn't make me feel relieved or almost-saved. It made me feel just as nervous as Azzurro looked.

Then the footsteps stopped. We all knew that whoever was out there, he was here. Then the door got pushed open calmly.

What the… Sebastian?

This was the guy that he'd been so scared of? All that extra security for Ciel's butler? Who was that guy? Was he not just a butler? Well, probably not, since he didn't look harmed in any way. I though no one would get to us alive. He seemed fine.

Maybe he's not only his butler, but also his bodyguard. You know, secret service and stuff.

Completely calm, Sebastian stepped inside the room. He didn't even seem to care that a gun was pointing at his head. He even bowed. 'I came to retrieve my master,' he said politely.

You've got to be kidding me… What the hell was it with these people and their inability to care?

Sebastian, still bowing, looked at me for a short moment and his eyes sharpened, as if my presence was unwanted here. Great, now finally someone looks at me and they give me that look.

Azzurro laughed and relaxed a bit, not impressed by Sebastian's appearance. 'Ha! This is a surprise,' he said, and for once he was right. 'I was imagining a brawny giant, but you're just some milksop in a tailcoat.' A hot milksop in a tailcoat. 'Who are you? You can't be just a butler. There must be more to you then you and that brat care to admit.'

My thoughts exactly.

Sebastian stood back up. 'No,' was his simple answer. 'I am merely one hell of a butler… That's all.'

Like hell that was all.

Azzurro laughed a short laugh. 'Oh, really? At any rate, I don't intend to fight you. But…' He stepped back and grabbed Ciel's hair, pulling him up.

I shivered as I looked at Ciel's pained face.

Azzurro put one arm around Ciel and with the other he pointed the gun at Ciel's head. I looked from Azzurro to Sebastian, but the only response Sebastian gave was that he parted his lips slightly. Azzurro laughed as if he had made the most genius move he could've ever made. 'You better have brought what I wanted,' he said to Sebastian.

Still calm and composed, just like Ciel was most of the time (I wasn't sure who learned from who, but those two were clearly made for each other), Sebastian reached with his hand in his coat. 'Yes,' he answered. He took a key out of his coat. 'Here it is,' he said, a smile on his face.

And then he got shot.

'Seba-' Ciel tried to scream, but he stopped himself from saying anything else. Finally, his face showed fear, sorrow, emotion.

Shooting him once wasn't enough. They kept shooting him until he fell on the ground.

If I could use my hands I would've used them to put them in front of my face. I didn't want to see any of this. Not after everything I'd seen.

Ciel's face showed pure shock. His mouth, blood on both sides of it, hung open as if he was still trying to scream. But he didn't.

I glanced at the portrait that was now ruined. The portrait I sat right next to. People from behind the portrait had shot Sebastian and now that there task was done, they left their hiding place.

Azzurro started to laugh a crazy and relieved laugh, as if he was scared it wouldn't have worked. 'Sorry, milksop, but I win this game!' he said laughing. His laugh was making me sick.

I couldn't believe that Sebastian was dead. Ciel and Sebastian always seemed like one thing to me. Want one, get the other. That's not the case anymore.

Azzurro was still talking crazy winners-bull crap. 'I'm up against Phantomhive, the game master, so of course I had a trump card to play!' He pulled Ciel's hair and directed his next words to him. 'I damaged the goods a little bit, but you should fetch a good price, even if they can't sell your parts.' With his gun, he removed Ciel's eye patch.

A year ago Ciel entered our classroom, accompanied by his butler. We didn't know who this kid was, why he was here, where he was from and why he had a butler at his side. The only thing we knew was that he would be in our class starting that day.

'Greetings,' he had said. 'My name is Ciel Phantomhive and I'll be in your class from now on.'

As soon as he said his name, the whispers started.

'Phantomhive… isn't that the family that got killed a few months ago?'

'No, no. Only the parents got killed. The kid lived.'

'D-do you think that he… he's their son?'

One of the stupider people in class shouted: 'Why does he have that eye patch-thing?!'

That was unbelievably rude. I knew that. Most of the people from the class knew that and no one would have asked except him.

But that didn't mean that we didn't want to know.

'My eye became this way the day my house got invaded and my parents were brutally killed right before my eyes,' Ciel answered coldly.

We all fell still. The brute way he'd said it the way he looked… it was just way too sad…

Ciel held his eye closed with all his might and something about that made me really sad. The same kind of sadness I felt when I'd first seen him. The face he made was the face of a lonely kid. A lonely kid only pretending to be brave.

Azzurro put the gun under Ciel's chin. 'No need to be shy. By the time some pervert takes you in-'

'Hey!' Ciel interrupted him. 'How long are you going to play around?' He was clearly not talking to Azzurro, but it didn't make any sense. 'How long do you intend to play dead?'

Huh? He was talking to Sebastian? And it sounded like he really believed that his butler was only pretending to be dead.

'Ciel,' I started, finally brave enough to say something. It was just too sad to see Ciel in denial about his butler's death.

'Goodness gracious,' a familiar voice said, making everyone except Ciel shiver.

No way…

Sebastian's fingers moved.

'T-that's impossible!' Azzurro screamed. His henchmen started to back away from Sebastian.

I didn't know how to react. I mean, how was I supposed to react? Even if the butler did wear something to protect himself from bullets, he got clearly shot in the head. I'd seen the blood!

Sebastian got up in a way that I didn't think was even possible. He just… rose. As if he was a zombie rising from his grave. Which would be more believable than what was going on here.

Wait… what exactly was going on here?

'Today's guns are so much more efficient than those from hundred years ago,' Sebastian said, making a strange move with his head. When his head was back up, I saw how bloody his cloves were. But I couldn't see what he had in the one glove he was holding in front of his face. 'I'll give these back to you,' he said murderously.

Azzurro panicked once again, this time he seemed to be out of options. 'What are you waiting for?!' he screamed to his henchmen. 'Kill him!'

That order made them raise their guns again, but it didn't help much. Sebastian threw whatever he'd had in his hands towards them, killing each and every one of them. When one fell down right at my feet I saw that the thing he threw were bullets.

His bullets. And thrown so fast that it killed them.

I swallowed.

Azzurro had frozen, giving Sebastian the time to check his clothes. I when I say 'time to check his clothes' I mean 'time to check his clothes'. And he even made a remark on the state of his clothes. 'Oh dear, my clothes are full of holes,' he said calmly.

'That's what you get for fooling around, you idiot,' Ciel said, calm but irritated. He emotion I'd seen of his face just a while ago had disappeared. Had it all been an act? Did he know that his butler wouldn't die?

Then Sebastian made the strangest remark of the day. 'Young master, you look good.'

It surprised me so much that I blurred out: 'No, he doesn't!'

Of course, I got ignored. Sebastian started to walk forward, towards his master and Azzurro, who said 'st-stop' very nervously.

Sebastian just went on talking as if he didn't hear anything. 'You're like a caterpillar; it's quite pathetic… and wonderful.'

Okay, great. I'm stuck in a room full of psychopaths. It must be Christmas.

'It suits a small and weak creature like you,' Sebastian went on, just proving my point of him being a psychopath more and more.

'I-if you come any closer, I'll kill him!' Azzurro said. But because he was so scared, it didn't sound threatening at all.

'Hurry up,' Ciel said, sounding bored all of the sudden. 'His breath stinks.'

I pressed my lips together in order to not scream at Ciel. Do you want to die, you bloody idiot?!

Sebastian seemed to think the same thing, he just thought and said it way more composed. 'But if I come any closer, you'll be killed.'

'Do you intend to violate our contract?' Ciel said and his boredom started to change into irritation and frustration.

Sebastian smiled an amused smile. 'Why, of course not. I am your faithful servant.'

Azzurro started to get impatient… and even more scared. 'What the hell is this nonsense?!' he asked.

'Young master,' Sebastian said, completely ignoring Azzurro. 'I have taught you how you could coax me into things, right?' He sounded like a total lunatic now.

But Ciel seemed to get the hint that no one else's could've get. And without farther conversation, Ciel opened his right eye. From my point of view, I didn't see anything wrong with his eye. 'This is an order,' he said. 'Save me!'

Well, until it started to glow, of course.

That was the moment that Azzurro lost it. 'SHUT UP!' he screamed and when he pulled the trigger, I closed my eyes. Dead Sebastian had been bad enough. I did not want to see dead Ciel too. Whether he would really die or not.

'Why-why isn't he dead?' Azzurro said, making me curious enough to open my eyes again.

Ciel was staring at Azzurro, the gun was still pointed to his head, and Sebastian was standing behind the two, holding something that looked like a bullet between his fingers. 'Looking for something?' he asked, making Azzurro look at him instead of at Ciel. 'I'll give this back to you,' Sebastian said, letting the bullet slip into Azzurro's chest pocket.

And then Azzurro started to twitch and I had to look away again. That did not look good. And I wasn't even sure how it was done. I kept my eyes closed this time, not wanting to see anything.

I just want to go home, I thought in a whining tone.

'This game wasn't much fun,' I heard Ciel say, but I still kept my eyes closed.

'Young master,' Sebastian said. 'I believe we have something that needs to be taken care of.' I was almost positive he was talking about me.

'Yes,' Ciel said.

'Do you want me to kill her?' he asked, making me shiver and scared. I didn't want to die. I really didn't want to die…

'No,' Ciel said almost immediately. 'But you can carry her.'

Not long after that someone picked me up, but even then I refused to look.

That didn't mean I couldn't hear Azzurro, who was apparently still alive, say: 'Wait! Come serve me. Be my bodyguard and I'll pay you five times the amount that he pays you. And you can have all the women and whine that you want!'

I froze. If Sebastian accepted, me and Ciel would be screwed.

'Unfortunately, Mr. Vanel,' Sebastian said slowly, 'I have no interest in rubbish created by humans. You see, I'm merely one hell of a butler.'

That was the last thing I heard before I passed out once again.

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