Notes: I do believe I said NOT to give character notes. Just so you know. I'm not mad, and thanks for all the info people have given me already, but please don't give any more information.
Part III
"Arthur-san?"
Arthur Kirkland looked up from his seventieth revision of his lesson plans to see Kiku Honda, standing there awkwardly in the doorway.
"What is it?" Arthur asked, smiling. "Are you here to visit? I have tea."
"Tea sounds good," Kiku acquiesced. "We're here to talk."
Arthur arched a thick eyebrow as he pulled out a chair for his Japanese friend. "What is it, then? I'm all ears."
"You remember what happened over the summer, right?" Kiku asked, accepting a cup of Japanese Sencha with a grateful smile. Arthur had a very extensive tea collection, and he always knew what Kiku wanted.
Arthur, halfway through pouring himself a cup of Earl Grey, frowned. "You might have to elucidate," he said, setting down the electric kettle and turning around. "What particular incident are we referring to?"
"The Bled one, what else?" Kiku asked. Arthur started looking distinctly uncomfortable.
"Er, yes, the Bled incident." Arthur shuffled from one foot to the other, blushing. "Why are you thinking about that now? I thought we agreed to forget it."
"It's hard to forget," Kiku pointed out, shifting slightly in his chair.
"Yes, I know…" Arthur sighed, surveying the Japanese man's countenance. "What are we going to talk about regarding the Bled Incident? We've already established that the colour cannot be undone, only removed temporarily."
Kiku took a sip. "Mr. Allen said that we've got to… help him."
Arthur blinked. "Help him? With what? Kiku, please stop being vague."
"Gomenasai, Arthur-san…" Kiku looked up at Arthur. "Mr. Allen knows what happened the night Bled was created, and he wants us to recreate the process."
"And why does he want that?" Arthur demanded, blushing furiously.
"He wants to know how we did it so that he can… undo the damage." Kiku paused, blushing. "That's what he said. It's vague, I know."
"Oh." Arthur bit his lower lip. "I see." Kiku nodded, smiling slightly. "Well, you know what? We're taking a vow of silence after this. No one else must know what happened that night."
"Hai," Kiku breathed. "I understand perfectly, Arthur-san."
"I knew I could count on you to agree." Arthur smirked.
"No headway on Operation Sonic Screwdriver?" Tori asked Kriss in the library on Wednesday. The League was collaborating on the scheme, but like before there had been no success.
"Nope," Kriss sighed, staring listlessly at a giant stack of books. "Nineteen books and not a single picture of David Tennant. I'm sad now."
"That's disappointing," Merka mumbled from across the table. Jennifer shrugged, partly absorbed in a book on parallel dimensions. All of the theory went over her head, but she liked the idea.
Anastasia Debby was reading the book over Jennifer's shoulder; she suddenly grinned. "Hey! Hey, look at this!"
Jennifer looked up. "Look at what?" she demanded.
"This article on the crossover plothole!"
Everyone gathered around the book. "But it's got nothing on how to make one," Karin Guarez whined.
"It would have solved the problem, right? If we had one, we could… go and find the Doctor and steal the Sonic Screwdriver from him!"
Pause. "Knowing Kriss, Merka, and Karin, they'd be too busy drooling at the Doctor to steal the screwdriver," Jennifer pointed out.
"Oh, right." Anastasia looked despondent.
The doors to the library were suddenly flung open and Shinbun-kun ran inside, throwing them a copy of the Bled Chronicles. Karin caught it and started reading. Yelling "EXTRA EXTRA!" at the top of his lungs, the hyperactive reporter raced out of the library, chased by Monaco, who was the grumpy (but hot) librarian.
"I swear, if he didn't write the newspaper I'd have complained to Mr. Allen about him already," Monaco groused as she picked up another copy of the paper and strode to her desk.
Karin and the other Anglophile Nerds were already discussing the front-page story about Tino's Christmas Heta Streeem. "Well, at least we won't have to miss any pictures if Shinbun's going to put them all in the paper."
The IAHF Staff was going to take a more… interactive route for the Heta Streeem this year. In terms of victims, the students were just as fair game as the staff. On Friday morning, the students were to submit their requests for pictures; the pictures would be given out at the Christmas Eve party. Students who had cameras had all been recruited as 'Santa's Helpers'.
"Hey, look here," Jennifer said suddenly, pointing to a sidebar article. "From the Desk of Mr. Allen/Hugh: The Crossover Plothole Warning!"
"Crossover plotholes?" everyone demanded, shoving at each other in order to get to the paper.
"Just read it out loud!" Tori hissed, shoving the paper at Monochrome Cloud. The Malaysian girl adjusted her glasses and began to read the article in a flawless BBC accent.
"Mr. Allen/Hugh's latest dispatches from the Protectors of the Plot Continuum headquarters warn us about crossover plotholes, not Mary Sues. According to the documents, there is a crossover plothole at IAHF that is on the verge of opening again."
"What!" exclaimed Rinaldia, causing poor Monochrome's glasses to shatter. Unfazed, she grabbed another pair and turned away from the Vocaloid. Rinaldia pouted.
"True to its name, the crossover plothole enables characters from two different fandoms to visit each other. Crossover plotholes are extremely hard to create, therefore the majority of them just randomly manifest. However, created plotholes are easier to seal off than naturally occurring ones. Bad plotholes will cause characters to become out of character during their travel, thus creating bad crossovers. 'We are trying to figure out how to seal this plothole,' Mr. Allen says. 'Hopefully it will be closed before the new semester starts.'"
"That means we have to find it now!" Merka declared, putting both hands on her hips.
"Apparently this crossover plothole was mysteriously created over the summer. Some Staff members claim that it had appeared at the same time as Bled. The creators of Bled are unavailable for comment. The plothole is currently harmless, but if the PPC Dispatches are of any significance, then these plotholes can become a serious problem if not sealed up in time."
He didn't give us the location, sighed Charley Maytha.
"At least we know one of them is at IAHF," Sakura pointed out.
"What are we waiting for?" Yuri demanded. "Let's go find it! It's adventure time!"
"Shush!" Monaco hissed from the librarian's desk.
Karen DuLay was having fun baking cookies. By now, this was her one hundred and sixth attempt to win Ludwig's heart. He'd come around soon, she thought maniacally as she continued to knead the cookie dough. Sooner or later, he will realise that we're meant to be…
"Karen!" a jarringly familiar voice resounded from behind her.
"Oh fuck, it's you," Karen snapped without even looking up from her work.
"Making cookies for Ludwig?" Aloisio Guerra asked, fluttering over her shoulder to watch her.
"You got a problem with that?" Karen demanded, looking back at him with a glare. Aloisio blushed and clasped his hands together innocently.
"Oho, not at all," Aloisio replied, grinning evilly.
"Then go away," Karen growled, raising her rolling pin threateningly. "I don't want to give Ludwig bloody cookies."
Aloisio did a flip mid-air, sticking his tongue out at her. "I'm not going until you declare your love for me!" he exclaimed dramatically, strumming his lyre. "Karen, Karen, te necisito solamente, te quiero solamente, te amo solamente…"
"Go away!" Karen started swatting at him with her rolling pin, and after a few moments of dodging, Aloisio took that as a very good indication to retreat.
He'd come up with a better plan soon.
"Dora, how's everything?" Carolina Brown asked, taking a seat next to her sister Dorothy. The green-haired girl looked up from her book, smiling slightly.
"Hm, it's been commonplace," Dorothy replied primly, noticing Carolina's slight slouched stance. "Sit up, Carolina."
"Yes, Dora," Carolina said meekly, sitting up straight.
"Now, tell me. How are the classes here? I only applied to make sure you were okay. Is everything all right?" She paused, and then grinned wickedly. "Have you fallen in love yet?"
"What, no!" Carolina snapped, eyes going wide. She turned to look at her sister. "You're not being serious, right?"
"I am always serious," Dorothy deadpanned.
"Sure, Dora, I'm sure you're joking, because there's no way that I like anyone. Absolutely not."
"You seem to be overreacting to such an innocent question, Carolina," Dorothy pointed out innocently.
"Well, I just wanted to make it perfectly clear!" Carolina exclaimed, blushing furiously.
"You're doing a horrible job of hiding any crushes."
"But you're my sister!" And Carolina never wanted to look bad in front of her sister! Absolutely not!
"Is that why you're always accusing people of lying when they tell me you like someone at school?" Dorothy wondered thoughtfully. "Because I'm your sister and you think it's icky to talk about boys with your sister?"
Carolina's face flushed tomato red. "Uh, yeah," she mumbled. "I'm just..." she trailed off awkwardly. "I don't know, I wouldn't call it love..."
"So you do admit you like someone, at the very least?" Dorothy arched an eyebrow, never losing her prim demeanour even when talking about liking people.
"Well, you know that I don't consider sexual attraction as a good foundation for a relationship," Carolina mumbled.
"Then what is?" Dorothy wondered.
"I thought you were asexual!" Carolina seemed desperate to change the subject.
"Just because I don't lust after anyone doesn't mean I don't think about love," Dorothy replied waspishly. "Carry on."
Carolina had bypassed fire engine red and was pushing brick red by now. "Well... there's this boy that I sit with at mealtimes..."
"The one with the glasses and the curly brown hair, am I right?" Dorothy asked. "Doesn't he have allergies to everything?"
"Yeah. And I think part of the reason why I like him is because I pity him," Carolina added, shrugging and looking at her feet. "I don't really think it's attraction – well, I'm hoping that it isn't."
Dorothy chuckled. "Well, don't go delineating feelings right now, Carolina, you're still fifteen."
Carolina nodded. "I know," she said. And she did. Everything her sister told her, she took to heart.
Mistletoe, mistletoe everywhere. It hung from the ceilings, the windows, the doorways, the bookshelves, the stairwells, the lights, and basically every possible location in the Staff Section. Vash Zwingli had already attempted to shoot down some of the mistletoe, but more kept popping up.
Arthur strode through the halls, glaring at the hemi-parasitic plant every time he encountered it. If I had two pence for every time I saw mistletoe, he thought poisonously, casting a particularly withering glare at the sprig dangling from the chandelier. As if it knew, the plant shrunk slightly.
"Rosbif, if you keep on glaring like that your brows will freeze together permanently," Francis remarked snidely. Arthur whirled around and took a few steps away from the chandelier, crossing himself as he went.
"What the fuck are you doing here, you bearded wine sop?" the Briton demanded, causing the Frenchman to chuckle.
"Oh rosbif, hasn't anyone ever washed your mouth out with soap?"
"Shut up!"
Francis looked up and grinned. "Not unless you kiss me, l'Angleterre," he said, grinning.
"What?" Arthur demanded. "Over my dead – GET DOWN FROM THE CEILING, BRITANNIA ANGEL!" He had looked up at the ceiling to see his angelic counterpart, who was conjuring more mistletoe over their heads with his magic wand. "I WILL FUCKING TEAR THE WINGS FROM YOUR BODY IF YOU – MMMF!" Francis had grabbed him and kissed him right at that moment, causing Britannia Angel to cackle evilly and start taking pictures.
"RAPE! RAPE! HELP, I'M BEING SEXUALLY HARASSED!" Arthur screamed as he forcefully broke away from Francis. He tried to jump for the angel, but Britannia only zoomed away backwards, laughing. "YOU WAIT UNTIL I GET MY HANDS ON YOU, YOU GOOD-FOR-NOTHING –"
"Calm down, rosbif. He's only going to distribute those pictures to Elisabeta and Kiku..."
"WHAT? I WILL NOT CALM DOWN TO THAT! THEY'LL SHOW THE ENTIRE SCHOOL! AND THEN THOSE BLOODY FANGIRLS WILL THINK I'M WITH YOU!"
Francis snorted. "And you think that I, a Frenchman of obvious refined tastes, would stoop so low as to go out with a thick-browed rosbif such as yourself?"
"THEN WHAT WAS THAT DAMNED KISS FOR?" Arthur demanded.
"Oh, l'Angleterre, obviously having half the school after you has gotten to your head." Francis pretended to have a migraine. "Pity, pity."
At that, Arthur smacked him all the way down the hall.
Notes: So, students. What do you want to see in the pictures? Anyone in IAHF is fair game.
