Kiss Me, Kill Me... RRB X PPG.. By Dark Angel 91398..
A/N: Hey, people! I'm back and yes, I am alive!~ I'll be trying to update every one of my stories for a while, but it might take away with writer's block for some and the fact my fourth laptop broke. My apologizes! Enjoy, nevertheless, and remember to click that review button! I'm too scared, I think it might bite me.. XD
Chapter Four: A Kelpie and a Promise
"I'll be right back.. I just need to check on Winny." Bubbles explained softly to the large man behind the desk.
Micheal Mitchelson scrutinized the young maid with a skeptical kind of glint in his eyes and the small blonde suppressed a small shudder. The red-faced man was the true master of the house and it was dolefully the reason she was talking to him or else she would have asked the duke's son, Mitch, for a small break.
"Is that all?" Micheal asked as his beefy hand absentmindedly patted his balding head. "No sneaking kisses behind the barn? No troublesome young lad with wandering eyes and matching hands?"
"No, sir. Not all." Bubbles shook her head, a fierce blush on her young face. "I-Isn't it a little early to be thinking about this?"
"You're fifteen years old, soon be sixteen in half a month's time. You tell me." he retorted with chuckle.
Bubbles ignored the man's insulting response with an air of carelessness. She would never find a partner, not with her eyes that all the people in the village called bewitched because they were different than a normal shade of blue.
Though the thoughts of marriage and family were unlikely, she still hoped that some day she would find the right man and she'd never have to be a maid again.
"Anyway, you may go care for your horse.. As long as you remember to feed the other livestock as well." the man finally said with a sobering sigh.
The girl nodded her head quietly and gathered up her long cloak gingerly with her fingers' knuckles white as if holding back emotions ungraceful before curtsying and exiting the room. Michael wondered what went through the maid's mind before remembering the important deals he had to settle on for the next day.
The outside world was white with new frost and delicate icicles hanging from every limbs on every tree. The snow had fallen during the night at some point and was unmarked. Unsurprisingly, the sky was the same color as the earth and yet not at all the same.
Bubbles paid none of this any mind as her long dress and cloak brushed the dusting of ivory from the ground and melted to water against the places where her skin was bare. Her mind was elsewhere, not here in the place she had been born and raised.
Her thoughts were far, far away with the past; that boy seemed so familiar, but somehow, he came off to her as a total stranger. Where? Where had they met before? Had it been in a past life of some sort? Or, maybe, she had seen him when he was a child?
The idea was so absurd that Bubbles had left it abandoned like a fallen flower petal and she pondered the notions that raced though her mind. He might have been a slightly dangerous one, that much she realized, and she felt absolutely comfortable in his presence.
But, Mike Believe wasn't truly as dangerous as everyone thought. It wasn't his fault that he had a few problems and that his name was like a black cat in the middle of a midnight path; he was just so susceptible to things considered paranormal.
Bubbles bit her lip and her sky blue eyes, the eyes the town elder called "them witch eyes", passed over the surroundings of ice as she heard the cries and calls of the barn animals in distress. Her eyes widened and her pace quickened with a beating heart.
The problems of poor Mike and his arrest were brushed aside roughly; what was going on involving those poor, defenseless animals was more important than her new friend.
Dramatic and tragic scenarios played in her head like a movie, mainly consisting of Mitch torturing the creatures like he had in the past, and the imaginary injustice propelled her forward to slam the red doors open and examine the area.
"Please calm down. I-I'm not going to hurt you.." a soft voice pleaded from somewhere in the dark shadows of the kennels.
The anger and courage she previously felt faded into a meek worry and fear. The voice was not one she recognized and sounded accented. Almost everyone from Townsville had that fast, slick kind of speech or at least from what visitors said, they did except Bubbles and her sister and few others, but even they had a speech pattern similar.
This voice had a slower, soft tone with an almost detectable pang of insecurity echoing through it. All Bubbles knew was that the speaker was male and possibly close to her age. In a way, that fact terrified her. Most boys in town that didn't work for someone were the type of people to murder and rob.
"Shhh.. Shhh.. It's okay.. I'm a good person, see? I can be nice just like you.. You probably want the carrot, don't you, sweetie?"
The neighing made Bubbles mobile again. Winny, her sweet mare that she had owned for three years and loved unconditionally, was neighing. Bubbles had to run towards her precious pet, her lovable horse.
What if those words, the words the voice uttered, were just a lure to get Winny close so she could be stolen and taken away forever? What if those enticing words were a trap to make Winny trust him and be the reason Bubbles' pet died?
Bubbles slowed down at the corner of Winny's stall and the stallion named Windy's, cautiously peeking in with an exasperating pace. The white mare pawed at the ground and let out a happy sounding neigh at the sight of her owner; what horse could hate someone so loving?
All the blonde maid saw was the cloaked back of the intruder and the boy's fluffy mane of blond that seemed to be made of pure gold. Her heart stopped as he turned to see her and Bubbles yanked herself back against Windy's stall before he could notice her.
"Shh.. Be a good girl, okay? Just for a little while.. You want some sugar, huh, sweetie pie?" the boy laughed. "Don't be greedy. No one is going to take that away, yes, ma'am."
Bubbles swallowed back her concern and a cold mist of snow seemed to blow down her spine as she gingerly attempted to approach the stall again. Her belly, now feeling ravenous since the early morning apple she had snuck, filled with butterflies the size of her hands.
Before she could even reconsider the idea, the timid girl scooped up a large pitchfork and with a horrifying scenario of her oh-so-sweet Winny dead, rushed forward with it in her hands.
Winny reared up in either surprise or glee, which Bubbles didn't know, and the invading boy spun moments too late. Bubbles squeezed her blue eyes closed as she heard his shocked gasp with his back hitting the wall and his head following.
She was scared, terrified, now that her mind was done with its fearful thoughts and the calm settled in for moments. Oh, what if, by some chance, the prongs of the farming tool had gone through him? Oh, what in the world was she thinking?
Meticulously, the maid opened her eyes and found herself staring at the Immortal from before when she had protected Windy. His dark eyes, rather much like the ocean, bore holes in hers and she was afraid all over again. He wasn't injured at all; she started ruefully wishing he had been in terror.
"M-Master D-Doom.." the girl squeaked, her bottom lip trembling. "Boomer.."
His dark eyes continued to stare into her light ones and he blinked as if studying her. His body rested between the second and third prongs, his cloak now muddied.
"You..." his husky voice rasped. "Tried to stab me."
Dumbly, the girl nodded; she knew better than to lie. Her father and her sister, Blossom, always told Bubbles to tell the truth.
"Y-yes.. I-I thought you were going to hurt W-Winny." she confessed, her cheeks turning red.
"Winny's your kelpie?" he frowned. "How did a person of your being, and a girl no less, come across such a powerful beast like a kelpie?"
"A kelpie..?" Bubbles repeated numbly. "What's a kelpie?"
Boomer wriggled his way out of the pitchfork's hole and the maid allowed gravity to steal the tool from her possession to rest it on the cold, unforgiving floor.
The reaper ignored the maid's question and instead, approached Winny with a quizzical look on his almost childish looking face as if he were looking at some sort of codes that had been untouched for many centuries.
Bubbles shuddered. She had absolutely no idea what Master Doom was thinking or plotting, no clue to what expressions lay under his mask of puzzlement. She could only watch as he and Winny observed one another with dark eyes.
Boomer, of course, had expected the blonde to not know what a kelpie was; knowledge of mystical and whimsical creatures had been washed clean of the village for the longest time. The only remains of the supposed fantasy creatures there were only items that merchants sold from other regions.
His blue eyes studied the animal with the rigid training of a hawk, always alert and staring. Gently, he cupped his fingers under Winny's head and his left hand trailed down her mane to the base of her neck.
Winny pounded the ground as if taunting the boy and Boomer applied an excess amount of pressure to the neck of the beast as he lifted her head up to the ceiling with a thunderous crack. The horse whinnied loudly and fell to its knees.
Bubbles screamed as if she was the victim and her fears vanished as she dashed towards the pair. Boomer's left hand lifted off of the former Winny's neck and Bubbles couldn't help herself as she smacked him as hard as she could across the face.
"Why did you do that?" Bubbles demanded, tears running down her face like a stream.
"Bubbles, calm down." the Immortal commanded, rubbing the red spot on his cheek. "Nothing's wrong-."
"Stop lying to me!" she shrieked.
"You're making a fool of yourself." he sighed.
"You killed my horse!" she screeched as she reeled her arm back to slap him.
Boomer grabbed the maid's arm and her wide eyes stared at him. His heart ached at the way she was looking at him, like he was a monster and a fiend. She was too pretty to cry especially over what he just did.
"Shh.. Just.. Listen for a moment, okay? First of all, Winny is not dead. I just broke her concealment." Misfortune explained.
"T-Then, why is she acting like that?" the maid sniffled.
"She'll get up in a minute. She has to readjust to having her normal abilities." he said. "Just watch."
Bubbles forced herself to look over at the deathly animal and her eyes trailed to something Boomer gestured to. White splotches of light seemed to float around in the barn air around Winny and the fur of the white mare darkened to a coal black.
Slowly but steadily, the horse's skin turned black and Bubbles stifled a whimper as the mane became a tangled, knotted mess of a slimy seaweed, hair, and what appeared to be bleached white bone.
Boomer felt the human grip his hand as if seeking comfort and his face turned red. It felt like the first time he had met her all over again, but different. He figured the transformation from mortal steed to a beast more like a nightmare would scare him as well if he wasn't so used to it.
The former Winny's eyes burned like coal, the chocolate color swirling into a flaming red, and Bubbles buried herself in Boomer's cloak.
Boomer trembled at the contact and swallowed nervously; his dad made it very clear not to go near her and yet he was letting her hold him. He had attempted to come off to her as a sweet but strong guy, a kind of mix of his brothers' qualities that he yearned for and his own, but she made him so nervous and shy that he had screwed up and had come off as a person with no heart.
"This is a kelpie." the Immortal said as his fingers left the chin of the beast.
"W-Will it.. I-It's still Winny, r-right?" the maid asked with large eyes.
"Of course. It's still the Winny you know, but.. in her real form." he replied.
Winny's blazing eyes passed over Boomer with contempt and scorn before she brought herself to look at her mistress. Bubbles made herself smile at the equestrian beast and her shaking hand lifted to the nose of the beast.
Boomer watched in fascination as the blonde stroked the former horse boldly and she lovingly hugged the creature before passing Winny a carrot. He remembered how difficult it had been for him to even go near a kelpie and this mortal shocked him with her easiness around Winny.
"Bubbles!" a craggy voice called from on the opposite wing of the barn. "Da boss man lookin' for ya! 'E said ya better hurry up!"
"Kuger, tell Mr. Mitchelson I'll be there in a minute!" Bubbles shouted back.
The blonde looked at Winny fearfully and stared at Boomer with her oh-so-beautiful eyes concerned. The duo exited Winny's stall and Bubbles moaned in worry.
"H-How can we hide a kelpie?" the girl inquired. "We can't have a mystical horse trotting around!"
"... I-I.. I can take her." the boy replied hesitantly as the kelpie glowered at him with flared nostrils.
"You'd do that for me?" she asked. "Thank you so much, Master Doom!"
"I-I'm, uh.. Please call me Boomer.." he stammered as she flung her arms around him, burying her face in his chest happily.
"Thank you, thank you, thank you!" she smiled, not noticing his tomato red face or the way he tensed up. "How can I ever repay you?"
Boomer opened his mouth to speak, closed it with an agonizing anxiousness, and swallowed. He hadn't a chance to reply however. The moment his vocal cords decided to work, an angry bang resonated through the stables and the animals cried out in shock.
"Aha! So, there is a boy involved!" a triumphant voice declared.
Bubbles' sky blue eyes widened and she yanked herself away from her savior in horror. Michael Mitchelson leered at her with a rather nasty smirk, the bullwhip in his hands dragging across the floor.
"And what's your name, boy? Who do you work for?" Michael demanded as he gripped Boomer's shoulder to spin him around.
Boomer smirked to himself and remained silent as he listened to the fat man's questioning and angry insults. He heard the whip crack through the air and it whistled past his ear by a mere cat's tail distance.
"I asked you who you worked for! Now, answer me, you bastard of a child, or so help me, I will castrate you right in front of your little lover girl! Better yet, maybe I'll whip her first-!" the man bellowed.
The whip sailed through the air and the boy heard it. The sound of Bubbles' yelp, the noise the weapon made when it made rough contact with skin. It was flicked again and Boomer's eyes narrowed.
With a sudden twist, the Immortal reached out and snatched the end of the dangerous man's toy. Michael blinked in horror; it should have hurt it and he shouldn't have caught it, but had his hand red.
The man's shock paralyzed him and with a yank, the whip was confiscated from the man. Boomer's eyes were shaded a dark navy blue, almost a black, and he finally answered the question.
"I work for my father, Lord Death. I am Master Doom." Boomer grinned with a feral look in his eyes.
The whip swished in his hands, toying with the air, and Michael's eyes widened as he saw the hidden rage underneath the blue eyes of the boy.
"But, that's not important right now, is it, Michael? What's important is the fact you whipped the girl under my protection. Did you know that?"
The man shook his head. Bubbles shivered despite the pain that jolted every nerve in her body. She remembered how angry Boomer had gotten before; she could honestly say that she never wanted to be the person to provoke him again.
"I'm only going to say this once, so listen to what I'm saying: Never, ever on your life, touch her again. If you do and I find out, let heaven have mercy on your guilty, sinful soul! I swear on my life, I will break every bone in your body and feed you to your own hogs! Do you comprehend that?"
"Y-yes, sir, Master Doom." Michael swallowed nervously.
Boomer turned to the maid and his expression softened visibly, eyes lightening, as he gingerly approached her. His eyes seemed more mournful than enraged; he regretted trying to be someone he wasn't and having someone be the martyr because of it.
He was afraid to touch her, afraid to even be in the same area as her, because everything he did just brought ill will and devastation to the people around him and Bubbles was always the one getting hurt. That was how he got his title after all, his father christening him with the title and the name becoming reality.
Those mournful eyes noted every detail of Bubbles and Master Doom winced when he saw how the whip had bitten her skin from her right shoulder to beneath her collar bone, had torn right throw her clothes.
The Immortal stopped an arm's reach away and refused to come any closer when he saw the dots of blood on her skin.
He was scared all over again, afraid that of the primal and baser instincts in him and oddly enough, that she would regard him as a monster and cry again.
He watched to see if the blonde would flinch when he approached like in the past and his heart ached when he finally brushed a fingertip against the wound.
Bubbles let out a small hiss of pain at the touch and Boomer wished his cold fingers could magically take away her pain. But, they could not and never would; his hands were permanently dyed red, that dreadful and invisible red dye that resisted every and any thing that could make it disappear for a while.
"I'm okay. Really, I'm fine." the blonde girl murmured. "Really."
"It's bleeding and it looks bright red." Boomer replied.
"But, it's fine. I-I'm kind of used to it." she insisted. "It's happened before."
His eyes flashed from the wound, hoping it wouldn't scar a white color against her lovely peach skin, and to her pale face that made her sky eyes look ghostly. Boomer could tell she had been hit before, maybe harder, and it made his stomach turn.
Boomer shot a glare to Michael Mitchelson who was frozen to the spot and his ocean eyes were stormy. He honestly didn't see how anyone could hit a girl with such a fighting weapon, but to hit Bubbles was something that made his mind a slate of pure white.
"You're lucky I don't go after you with that tantalizing little play thing of yours." Boomer growled with a pang of unearthly fury. "Apologize. Now. Beg for her forgiveness or else I swear I'll sew that fat mouth of yours shut with your own hands."
"Bubbles.. I'm terribly sorry for my actions.. Forgive me, please." Michael pleaded as he looked the maid.
"I-It's okay.. I-I'll be fine by tomorrow." the blonde smiled.
Boomer's mouth turned down at the corners bitterly as if the scene made his mouth fill with something sour and foul. He continued to stare at the fat man with venom in his eyes and Michael started his way out of the red barn.
"Oh, and.. Bubbles? I'm afraid your services aren't needed anymore. Find your work elsewhere." Micheal Mitchelson stated smugly as his hand touched the door handle.
Bubbles' eyes widened and her bottom lips quivered as the news became something understandable in her mind. Boomer snarled and the whip in his hands was flung towards the man. Micheal scurried out and instead of hitting the initial victim, the door was struck shut.
With a defeated sigh, the Immortal turned his back on the offending weapon and gently wiped away the girl's tears. It was his fault that the mortal had lost her job and he felt the regular echoing floods of guilt pass over him.
"O-oh.. N-Now what?" Bubbles whimpered with her eyes looking like a calf's.
"I'll get you a job. I promise. Swear on my life, I will." the Immortal vowed.
The maid looked at him dubiously, the doubts spoken not aloud but with her eyes. He didn't understand it; she was now jobless and had no roof over her head nor a bed to sleep in. He would never understand it because he was Lord Death's son, a member of the notorious Death Trio.
He hadn't been born in a small hut in the village and seen one of his sibling die. He had never had to watch his father mourn the death of a mother he could never remember no matter how hard he wanted to. He had never been hassled by the uptown children or been forced to go out with one and almost get beaten for being scared of his "date".
No, Boomer never would have to, never had to in the past, because he was one of the rich children who always got new things and never longed for something as simple as a new cloak and always had their parents sort out any messes that developed, most of the time solved with money.
As bitter and upset as she felt, Bubbles didn't voice it even as that privileged boy wrapped her in his arms and try to comfort her. She simply remained silent and clung to him with hopes as low as the diminishing tide, trying to stay positive.
"You can always work at my house." the guilty teen pointed out.
Boomer felt the blonde's muscles grow taut with the words and bit his lip.
"No." Bubbles said, trembling. "No."
"Why not? W-We'd be able to see each other and-." he started.
"I-I'm sorry, Boomer, but, I-I can't." she interrupted.
Bubbles started to squirm in the embrace she had been trapped in and Boomer felt his heart drop at the rejection.
Was it because it was him? Or because who lived in his household other than him? He wasn't quite sure, but his stomach rumbled with the butterflies in it beating their enormous wings furiously.
"Why not?" Boomer asked. "Why can't you work somewhere near me?"
Bubbles wriggled about and his grip on her tightened desperately. Deliriously, the mad thought of abducting her filled his mind and he hated himself for letting his insane uncivilized thoughts invading his brain.
"I-I can't." the maid repeated.
She'd be lying if she said she wasn't terrified, she was ready to sob with the fear clouding her sunshine state of mind, but, she could never dream let alone reveal aloud the horror she felt at the suggestion.
He was a nice enough person, when he wasn't enraged at least, but she would never work or live in the same house as him without it being involuntarily.
Live in the same house as Death, Demise, Disaster, and Doom? The idea was so delightfully absurd, madly wild, that she would have laughed had she been a bolder spirit.
"Please consider it at least." the boy sighed miserably. "You've kind of run out of options and with cold nights like this, you're more likely to freeze before you find work or any shelter."
"Thank you, but, I've got to get going before he comes back and throws his hounds on me or something horrid like that." the girl replied, shaking and trying to escape the hold.
"Say you'll work for me." he begged. "Bubbles, we might have just met, but I-I'd prefer knowing who you're working for and where. I-I.."
Master Doom swallowed, his throat suddenly parched and unnaturally stubborn, and he forced himself to continue, to admit that he was infatuated with her and every little thing she did despite their unexpected meeting, that he wished for her to love him like he knew he did her.
"I-I'm awfully fond of you.." Master Doom confessed, watering down the truth to the point of it being a pretense.
"I-I can't. Really. I have my sisters to worry about and my father, he's been sick recently." Bubbles rambled. "I-I don't think your own father would appreciate a random girl working in his house without his knowledge or anything."
"You have a point.." he admitted. "I'll ask him tonight and I'll tell you the results the next time we meet. I swear on my life. Pinky promise!"
Bubbles felt the feeling of crushing despair fill her at the boy's word and at the way he looked at her when he drew back from the embrace to give her his smallest finger.
Ruefully, the villager wrapped her own pinky around his and Boomer's face lit up like a star in the sky. She felt like a star crashing to earth.
And as if foreshadowing tragedy, Winny the kelpie's haunting neigh filled the air and the mortal animals shrieked.