"Crim?"

Crim and Elf looked up, frowning in confusion when they saw Turquoise standing above their little study circle, her mouth pulled into a tight frown. "That's you, right?"

The goblin glanced at Elf, then back at the blue-haired monitor. "Yeah. Is there a problem?"

"You're brother's in trouble. And Elf, Red's in trouble too."

Elf and Crim glanced each other, and as one, they sighed.

"What did they get mixed up in?"

"It looks like they were trying to break out of the school. They keep saying that they weren't, but they need you guys to vouch to get out of confinement."

Crim rubbed his face, then stood, holding out a hand for Elf. The hand was accepted and the goblin helped the paler creature up. "By the gods, we haven't been here for two days and he already needs me to bail him out…"

"I haven't known this human for two days and already she needs me to assist her to stay away from disciplinary action…" both Elf and Crim grumbled softly.

Turquoise smiled sympathetically and ushered them out of the library. "They were both found lying down on the grass, so you're probably not going to get too much scrutiny from the dean. And do you know who I should go to for Coal, Dwarf, and Halfling? Half-Elf came and vouched for Drow, so he's out, but Coal and Dwarf are both caught up and Halfling doesn't have a roommate."

"I am willing to vouch for Coal and Dwarf." The words popped Elf before she could stop them, and it wasn't clear why. The student had only known them for a day, and vouching was a dangerous process usually reserved for close friends, though it seemed as though there was a social rule that required roommates to vouch for each other…

Elf didn't find that she wanted to take back her offer, though. She could trust them.

"You sure?" Turquoise frowned a little, already leading both of them out of the library towards the main office. "If they mess up again during the vouching period, you're going to get in serious trouble. Really. One of the girls went lame after what they gave her for a bad vouch, it was that brutal."

"I am certain." Elf primly smoothed the wrinkles out of the blue cloak. "I won't vouch for Halfling, however."

"Good move. He's a little psycho." Turquoise rubbed her palms on her cloak. "It looks like he's going to have to deal with solitary restriction."

"He seems like he would be able to handle it," Elf said wryly. "Do you think that they will mutilate him?"

"No. They only do that to the girls. The most he'll get is SR, but it's possible he'll get off with just a beating if no one vouches."

Turquoise pushed the door to the main office open, revealing five very unhappy-looking teenagers, all of which not sitting down despite the presence of a perfectly comfortable couch.

"Brother?"

Crim frowned, making a beeline for his little brother and already reaching out to see if he was hurt. "What happened?"

"Save it for the Rap."

Crim was only barely paying attention, checking his guilty-looking brother over carefully with barely concealed concern in his eye. "Rap?"

Patch shifted uncomfortably, trying to hide something from view, but Crim had already seen it. The seat of his little brother's pants was soaked through with blood.

Crim swallowed hard and bit back his words.

"Big Brother, it's not that big of a deal…" Patch murmured softly, shifting so the blood was back out of view.

"No one's told you about the Raps?"

Elf, noting that Crim was quietly doting on his brother and blind to what was around him, smoothly picked up the slack while walking to Red with a disapproving scowl. "No. No one has informed any of us of these 'Raps.'"

Turquoise whistled softly. "Well, if they didn't tell you about them, then they don't want you to know. Elf, you're scheduled to have one with Ms. Feelgood."

Elf frowned, examining the quiet Red, Coal, and Dwarf, noting that they had blood as well. "Ms. Feelgood?"

"The health teacher. I think she changed her name when she came here." Turquoise frowned, crossing her arms. "Sign the people you're going to vouch out, get Red to your room, and go to the Dining Hall. Your Rap's going to be there."

"Of course, of course." Elf let Red go, frowning at the blood and wondering if she should feel apprehensive about vouching for three different people if she could, at the very least, be beaten just as savagely if any one of them stepped a toe out of line in the next two weeks. She wasn't worried.

"And they're going to need to turn up for punishment or you'll get in trouble as their voucher."

"Of course." Elf wasn't even listening. "Where should I sign them out?"

Elf would come to wish that she had asked more questions.

---

Elf walked in the Dining Hall to see student going to the center of the unusually empty room to sit in a big circle of what looked like twenty to thirty chairs. There was no person that Elf recognized—it was all just sophomores, juniors, seniors, and maybe a couple unfamiliar freshmen. The health teacher—Ms. Feelgood—sat in one of the chairs, her smile still frozen on her face, and her legs crossed, her hands gripping her knees so hard that her knuckles were white.

Elf frowned, expecting a seminar on academic integrity or some such thing, and sat down. Slowly, everyone settled in their seats.

As if a signal had been given, one of the students, a blond elf girl, stood up and blazed towards a black-haired human sitting a few chairs away from her. Elf jerked in surprise, wondering if this was a planned demonstration for the students of if the elf girl was just unstable and had cracked. "You know what, Black? I'm sick of dealing with your crap. Every year it's always the same—you come to classes ten minutes late blabbing about how you got lost or you were helping some freshmen to their classes and I just want to cuss you out 'cuz you know it's against the rules to come late and you flaunt it!"

"Yeah! And then you just sit with me and my friends at lunch without an appointment!" an orc boy with red-blond hair stood up and ran besides the elf, glaring down at the student, Black. "You know that's against the rules!"

Wait, one had to make an appointment to sit with someone at lunch?

"Yeah, and I'm sick of having to haul my ass over to the main office to vouch for you after you get another lateness!" A blond human joined the growing wall of angry students. "One of these days I'm going to have to sit on the stump for your sorry hide!"

Black, for his part, looked positively bewildered and gripped the seat of his chair, skin draining of color. Elf looked at Ms. Feelgood in shock, expecting some sort of intervention, but her smile remained frozen as always as she watched the students gang up on the boy.

The dark-skinned, red-haired girl besides Elf burst into howling cries. Elf jumped in surprise, looking over at the girl with bafflement to see that she was hunched over, tears pouring from her eyes, and sobs coming from deep within her. Elf had never heard someone weep like that. It was as if an infant, with their cries using the entirety of their lungs, had retained their bawling abilities into adolescence and were using them to their full potential.

"WHY WOULD HE DO THAT—" the torrential sobbing drowned and garbled up her words, so it was a bit before Elf could make it out again, "—MUFFIN, I'M SORRY!"

Elf stared with a mixture of shock and disgust as the girl's sinuses emptied themselves on the floor, mixed with saltwater, and the garbled howling kept going like a broken radio with its volume on 'high' and broadcasting only static.

More people joined in on verbally beating Black, until he had at least seven kids on him, and two more students started crying and shrieking just like the girl beside Elf, each one of them wailing about different things, but only a few snippets of words were actually understandable.

"…ALONE AND NO ONE IS…"

"…IT WAS ONLY A FEW! WHY DID THEY SEND ME…"

"…HATE HATE HATE IT H…"

"…NO HOPE LEFT!…"

"…MUFFIN!… KILLED…"

"…WHY DID SHE ALWAYS LIKE HIM BEST?!"

Elf slammed delicate hands to even more delicate ears, trying to protect her breaking eardrums and looking up at Ms. Feelgood pleadingly, begging her to step in and stop this madness. Her smile remained frozen, and she was talking to the students, though Elf was barely able to hear her over the din.

"…Yes, that's good, Braid. That's good. Let out your emotions like a good girl. Black, are you listening to your peers?"

…By the gods, was she egging this on?!

A half-hour in, Black started to cry under the pressure that the students, now a total of nine attackers, put him under, and yet they didn't stop. The noise was deafening.

Elf turned her face down to look at her knees and kept her hands clamped firmly on her ears, praying that this torturous ordeal would end soon.

---

"Who did this to you?"

Patch's ears were light red as his big brother rewrapped his wounds properly. Crim, long since abandoning modesty, was diligent in his work and didn't seem aware that his brother was completely naked so he could do this. Luckily, Scar had been willing to turn a blind eye to a closed door in this case.

"…You know. The chancellor. Dragon."

"That woman with the tattoo on her face and the light blue eye and dark blue eye?"

Patch nodded, awkwardly fidgeting with the edge of his sheets. "She did the beatings herself. By the gods, she's got an arm on her."

"I can see that."

"I don't want to know where she learned how to beat guys so hard."

The crack got a little smile out of Crim, but it disappeared with another look at his brother's raw and bloody flesh. "You should be more careful." He wiped the blood away gently with a damp cloth and picked up a bottle of rubbing alcohol, dabbing a little on the wounds and provoking hisses of pain from his brother.

"I told you: I didn't do anything! It was all that psycho halfling." Patch frowned and shifted uncomfortably. "I was just on the grass with that cute redhead and he tried to jump the fence."

"Well, now they're going to give you another ritual punishment we know nothing about. Can't you pick your company carefully?" Crim picked up a roll of bandages, gently wrapping up his brother's wounds.

"I didn't think that he'd try to jump the fence. If it's any consolation, we found out that it's electric. He was fried when the staff came running at us."

Crim frowned, tightening the bandaging. "Just try to be more careful. You're too old for your big brother to come down and help you out of whatever trouble you've gotten yourself into."

"It wasn't my fault!"

"Still, be careful." Crim was finished with the bandages, so he stood up and handed over his little brother's clothes. "Here you go."

Patch couldn't get dressed fast enough, but he winced every time something brushed his bandaging. "Why did the elf vouch for Red, Coal, and Dwarf?" he asked, eager to change the subject. "She doesn't know any of them well, and she doesn't look nearly cool enough to be willing to deal with the crap that can be sent her way."

"You're right, but she was really calm about it." Crim helped his brother dress patiently, making sure he remembered to put a towel in the seat of Patch's pants for cushioning. "Don't get me wrong—she's a self-important, confrontational pain—but I can't help but be really interested in how this is going to play out. It looks like there's going to be fireworks with the way things are going."

"As long as you don't have your other eye gouged out, do what you want." Patch winced in pain and carefully lay down in his bed, keeping from sitting. He wouldn't be sitting properly for a while.

"It's bad enough to swing my head around to make up for one lost eye—I don't need to lose two."

The door opened without warning. Both Crim and Patch jumped in surprise.

"It's almost time for sign-in. You have to keep your door open now."

Scar looked a little troubled over something, but he left without another word, leaving the door swinging behind him.

"Ugh. Sign in."

Patch frowned, pushing himself off the bed awkwardly, trying not to move anything that would stretch his lash marks. "Hey, Big Brother?"

Crim glanced over at him. "Yeah?"

"I swiped something from the chancellor's room."

Crim stiffened, eye going wide with fear.

"Don't worry! It was just an apple. I bet even she couldn't make a stolen apple an excuse to beat the ever-loving daylights out of me." Patch awkwardly toddled to his desk, opening one of the drawers and pulling out a ripe red apple. "I'm going to sign in. Consider this my thanks for helping me out, Big Brother."

He tossed the apple and Crim caught it easily. The elder brother frowned disapprovingly as the younger smiled sheepishly and scampered out of the room.

Crim shook his head and sighed, sitting down at his bed. He wasn't supposed to go to sign in until after his brother came back. That could be a while.

He absently brought the apple to his lips, making a little knick in its flesh with his teeth and licking at the juice that came out.

Heat was rising. Two intertwined bodies were one, their breath, their groans, their very heartbeats in perfect sync with one another. He was afraid. Terrified, actually. Love so strong it threatened to burst his heart was rising in his throat, all for the delicate but so strong creature beneath him. And when the dawn came, anything could happen. He could lose her. He could forget her. He couldn't deny those possibilities.

But his fear was soothed. She knew it was there and kissed him, stroking his face even as the passion rose. "I love you."

The darkness only gave them a few precious hours. That would be enough.

"I love you." He gasped, letting the pale creature bury her face in his neck when crescendo was reached. "I love you, Vaarsuvius."

Crim blinked in surprise, staring at the floor with the dribbling apple held tightly in his hands.

"What the hell does she put in these?" He gingerly tossed the apple in the garbage, his hands shaking a little. Chills rippled through his skin, and he absently leaned forward, pulling a water bottle out from under his bed and taking a long drink from it, washing the taste of the drugged apple from his mouth.

He put the water bottle back, the memory of the illusion already fading from his mind, and frowned at the trashcan until Patch came back. He forgot the hallucination soon after.