~CHAPTER 3~
Slowly but Surely Losing Faith in the Existence of Sanity.
Disclaimer: I don't own Square Enix, and therefore do not have the ability to modify gravity at will... unfortunately.
The bell finally rang to signal the end of class and the students all started to get up, readying to go to their next classes.
"Wait," Mrs. Barker said, suddenly stern. "There are a few of you I want to talk to... Stay behind. Sephiroth, Vincent, Lucrecia, Aerith, Yuffie, Zack, Genesis, Angeal and... Hojo." She was disconcertingly able to look at each of them as she said their names, not even looking at the class list to find them. It struck me for the first time that she could very well be familiar with the characters.
The rest of the class left, but I hung back by the doorway, pretending to fix the clasps on my bag and refasten my slogan buttons.
"Best of luck to those poor wretches from me, right?" Tarquin breathed as he passed me, not looking down to make eye contact with me.
I hovered in the doorway, hoping not to be noticed and shooed off, but in vain.
"Who's she?" Mrs. Barker asked, nodding at me curtly.
"She's... our friend..." Vincent said hesetantly.
At this I dashed back into the classroom and grabbed Lucrecia's hand in the best-friend-y way that only teenage girls can pull off.
Mrs. Barker looked at me searchingly. "I see you're 'in' on this little scheme as well."
"'Scheme'?" I asked.
Mrs. Barker glared at me, then made a sweeping radar-search of all of us, focusing again on Sephiroth. "Crescent?" She asked incredulously.
"Oh no, not again," Sephiroth said, putting a hand loosely over his eyes. "This is what I was trying to avoid…"
"Don't cry, Sephiroth."
He glared at me and I moved slightly to stand behind Lucrecia.
"'Again'?" She asked. "You've been asked about your falsified names before?"
I looked at Lucrecia, then at the rest of the group. Everyone was wearing expressions ranging from aloof surprise to scandalized shock. Even Hojo, standing far from the rest of the group, was looking at the teacher curiously.
"You think they're fake names?" I asked.
"Not you..." She looked at the class list, "Nicole Brent, right?"
I nodded.
"But everyone else… Sephiroth?" She looked at him. "Really? I'm not stupid."
"Shit…" Vincent muttered.
"Vincent!"
"Sorry…"
Mrs. Barker shook her head. "It's a good trick. Must have taken a lot of effort, but I want to know your real names. Now." She glared at Yuffie.
"Hey, hey! I'm Yuffie!!" She said, waving her hands frantically. "See? Really!" She waved her arms awkwardly. "I can't show you my ninja ID, 'cause then I'd have to kill you…"
Mrs. Barker shook her head
"Wait! I have an idea!! Uh… Do something only you could do. Sephiroth is the only one who can wield Masemune, right?!" I grabbed onto one of Sephiroth's shoulders overenthusiastically.
"Nix, don't touch me."
"Sorry." I removed my hands and folded them behind me sheepishly.
"Actually," Genesis said, examining his gloves distractedly, "The Masemune… well, it's not quite so amazing, is it? A competent Third Class could probably heft it. Didn't that girl from Nebelheim—?" Genesis's little oration was cut off by Sephiroth tackling him.
The brawl only lasted a very quick five seconds before Sephiroth emerged with Genesis's head firmly restrained.
"Sephiroth, please stop pulling my hair… I will apologize…"
Sephiroth leaned his head down and snarled something in Genesis's ear. The only word I could hear even faintly was "Apples."
"Now, you are dead." Genesis said calmly. With the disturbing sound of ripping hair, he twisted violently out of the headlock.
"Sephiroth!"
The battle ceased immediately as Sephiroth backed away from Genesis, looking at Lucrecia in a half-defiant way.
Genesis was still glaring at him warily.
"Apologize."
Sephiroth muttered something quietly that could have equally been an apology or a curse.
Lucrecia pointed to the multitude of overturned tables littering half the classroom. "Fix it."
Sephiroth turned to survey the rather extensive damage.
"You too, Genesis."
Genesis shrugged his coat back onto his shoulder and looked away from Lucrecia haughtily, standing casually with more weight on one foot.
Sephiroth quietly and methodically started righting the tables. When Yuffie began to help it took only moments for the room to be back in order.
Lucrecia nodded to Yuffie approvingly. "Thank you."
I turned to Mrs. Barker with my hands balled into fists on my hips. "Well? Do you believe us yet?"
"No." She glowered at me. "But you should get out of here before you're late to your next class."
"We'll say we all got lost." I said, looking sideways at Lucrecia. Everyone left, except me.
Lucrecia hung back in the doorway, looking back at me. "Nix? Are you coming…?"
I had raised my hand, looking at Mrs. Barker expectantly.
"...We're not in class. You don't have to raise your hand." She said.
"I know." I didn't lower my hand.
"Fine. What, Nicole?"
"Uh... first, I'd be much obliged If you'd call me 'Nix', and uh..." I pondered how to pose my question. "Does he have a first name?"
She bit her lip and looked down at the class list. "He's registered as... Daryl."
"What!?" I said, then I started laughing hard enough that I had to be escorted to lunch.
I got on the bus that afternoon to find that I recognized a large portion of the people there. "Omigod! You guys are on this bus!?!"
Vincent looked at me almost angrily. "How many times have you said 'omigod' today?"
"Um…" I bit my lip, counting mentally. "Seventeen? Yah, seventeen."
I sat in the empty seat in front of him and Lucrecia. Sephiroth was in the seat in front of me, Genesis in the seat across from me and Angeal behind him.
Genesis was reading again.
"Genesis, you're gonna get sick reading on the bus."
"I'll be fine." Next page.
"You sure? I can't last five minutes..."
"I don't get motion sickness." Next page.
"... Whatever."
Yuffie dashed onto the bus just before the doors closed and sat next to me so enthusiastically that I had to virtually duck for cover under the window to avoid being sat on.
"What'd I miss?!" She asked as the bus jerked to life.
"Uh... I've said 'Omigod' seventeen times today and I think Genesis is going to get motion sickness reading on the bus."
There was a soft rustle of a turning page from Genesis's seat.
"Nix, don't push Genesis." Sephiroth advised.
"Why not?"
"Because if you're wrong, he will never forgive you." Angeal answered. "And if you're right…"
"You'll get puke all over your shoes." Sephiroth said, not turning around. I could hear his smirk in his voice.
Genesis shut Loveless with a loud cracking noise, glaring at Sephiroth dangerously.
I looked around quickly for a distraction. "Wait a minute, where's Zack?" I asked, suddenly realizing that I couldn't see his hair sticking up anywhere in the bus.
I looked up at Aerith, who was sitting towards the front of the bus. From the seat next to her rose a half-limp gloved hand. She giggled. Zack was apparently attempting to use the bench-seats of the bus to take a nap.
I chuckled and looked around at the few other students I didn't recognize. A pair of girls in the very front seat kept glancing back at Genesis.
I fell back happily into a conversation with Yuffie about nothing in particular.
"So, you guys are living here too?" I asked Angeal.
"Well... It's kinda assumed that they're staying at The Manor with the rest of us, right?" Sephiroth said, putting his backpack over a shoulder and aloofly leaping off the bus.
The Manor was what we had begun to call the place.
I looked down the path lined by wild trees, the path I had pondered with curiosity. It seemed like so long ago when Sephiroth had forbidden me to follow the group. The path was even more of a chilling sight to me now. The story had been told to me in sporadic, discombobulated, self-contradicting pieces, but its significance was clear.
"I figured it out!" Reeve had said.
"Figured what out?" Lucrecia had asked.
"How to kill a lv. 60, probably…" Nanaki had said, yawning, tail swinging in lazy arcs of flame.
"No, really," Reeve had said, dashing into the main room where the rest were from the tech room where he had been. "I know whose house this is!!"
He had looked flustered and scared, according to Yuffie, but Nanaki said he was wearing a scary grin. Either way he had dashed back into his technology room. "The house isn't registered to anyone, right?" General assent. "But someone's registered to the house…
"Thirty years ago, this address was listed as the residence of one Mrs. Agatha Randal…"
"Nix?"
"Ah! Sorry, I was having a flashback…"
Lucrecia shook her head disparagingly. "I'll see you tomorrow, Nix."
"Good luck!" I said, waving, watching her leave with a critical eye.
Author Note: There is a fatal flaw in my scheme. I'm trying to put chapters up every weekend, but I do not write quite so consistently. Expect my punctuality to fizzle out before chapter ten and forgive me when it does…
