At littlecatbug22, I can't tell if that's a reference to my username or yours, but either way, MOWR! I will keep going. And yeah, MeowVolcano, that was…that was a chapter. Disgusting. Horrible. Excellent symbolism in the art style that really captures the trauma it puts a ten-year-old through. You'll never look at moths the same way again. Sebastian did the world a favor by eviscerating those cultist dudes. I don't know who's toolazytosignin, but damn straight, I'm back in black! Whoo! Also, in conjuncture to No Idea What to Name This, it's the new decade. What the fuck. I mean I was born in 1999 so the decade's basically the same age as me so I always could very easily subconsciously track the onslaught of time but what the FUCK. My soul is not even remotely prepared for this to be a new decade. Also, again, it's a fun little nerve-wracking dance for me writing this as Arya thinks and does things that touch upon the stuff that's happened in the series after she stopped reading it. She's all like "Man Ciel's got an issue with his power trip and whatnot" and then there's literally everything that happened in regard to his twin and its just like "Oh hun. It's not just one issue." And its an even MORE nerve-wracking dance for me to try and guess from the shots in the manga panels and the sparse amount of information given what the color and arrangement of like...everything should be in this fic. If and when this arc gets adapted into the anime I'm probably gonna have a fair bit of re-editing to do.

February 3rd, 2020

Arya's POV:

It can certainly be said that there are varying degrees of Bad Things To Wake Up To. An angry cat is certainly not good, particularly if there is an empty food dish somewhere in the house. An angry spouse, on the other hand, is significantly worse. Uninvited guests is a good one, natural disasters is another, and strapped to a table inside a flying saucer with a bunch of ominously pointy implements aimed at you by angry-looking aliens is an especially bad occurrence. Personally, my worst wakeup call to date had been an immortal magical madman with a butcher knife poised above my face kneeling above me on my bed, but that's as maybe. I'm sure there were even worse things to wake up to, including not waking up at all.

That being said, I was awoken one night about a week after Ciel had cleverly snatched victory from the jaws of defeat and become the fag to the Blue House's prefect's fag by the sound of what seemed suspiciously like a large-scale explosion.

My eyes snapped open as my whole body stiffened inside the warm, heavy clasp of my cotton bedsheets, ears involuntarily straining to catch the slightest hint of a repeat of that noise. Undertaker couldn't be wreaking havoc with his scythe, could he? He and Sebastian hadn't even fought in the manga when they'd confronted him about the school murder mystery, unless you counted a brief exchange of blows that ended in a tense standoff of less than three minutes.

Unless he caught him early, in which case, fuck me. I thought sourly, hearing the shifting rustle of bedclothes as the other boys in the room sat up and took notice.

"Did you hear that?"

"Sounded like an explosion!"

"Could one of the fireworks for the tournament have misfired?"

"No, I thought they weren't due to arrive for another week yet."

"Great Scott!" This came from Charles, who as I rolled over to look was standing over by our dorm room window, the very same that I had based so many midnight escapades around, staring out into the night with tense shoulders and his hand pressed against the glass. "Purple House is on fire!"

"WHAT?!"

This universal exclamation was then met with a near-universal rushing to the window to look, as I scrambled out of my bed to put on my shoes. I knew where this was going: and the new perspective gleaned from living in this world, namely that, like us, the Violet House students were actually locked inside their dorm rooms at night after curfew meant that even a small fire could become extremely deadly.

"We need to go help them!" I said, slinging on my morning coat for extra protection against embers –no way was I going to waste time putting on the entirety of my monkey suit– and throwing a panicked bolt of magic into my apocalypse bag as I plunged my hand inside and miraculously came up with the orange scarf Miss Nina had given me. As the others scrambled to don shoes and more clothing of their own, I wrapped it around my neck and knotted it tight enough it wouldn't fall off my shoulders. I then ran to the door to build up speed and force, before delivering a high kick that splintered the jamb and sent painful, achy aftershocks down to my knee, but did the job and broke the lock. Shoving the door open and darting out into the hall, I saw Edward frantically jamming a master key into lock after lock as more young men around my age or slightly younger spilled into the hall, alerted by Edward's rapidfire explanation upon jerking open each door, and hastened down the steps in an only slightly-discombobulated crowd.

The mob of young men rushed out in varying levels of dress –I wasn't sure whether to be disgusted or impressed that everyone else had donned their vests and ties along with their morning coats over their nightshirts, most of which were primly tucked in, and decided to settle on just pushing forwards– across the large lawn that spanned the spaces between the dorms, some of the bolder specimens deciding to forgo school tradition entirely as they pelted across the smooth lawns, though most of the groups –several more were rushing out of the darkness from the directions of Red and Blue House– stuck to the wide paths as they rushed towards the bright, flickering orange glow that feathered out into smokey grey plumes that mixed and blended with the dark night.

Hmm.

Luckily –if one could call anything involving a fire lucky– the fire seemed to be confined to the right-hand wing of the dorms, as we rushed up in a single large mass to see the Violet Wolf House residents huddled outside their ornate iron gates, most of them in varying states of nightshirt-and-jacket, with the prefect, Violet, and his fag Cheslock and a few other upperclassmen dressed fully, undoubtably because they had been staying up late to patrol and do one last lockdown before bed. Those dressed ones were moving throughout the Purple House crowd, who had somehow clumped together in what looked suspiciously like order of age, checking off names or presences.

"VIOLET!" I heard Greenhill's distinctive bellow as the rest of the school came even and the three other prefects hurried to their companion's side. "Is everyone all right?"

Violet cast a glance at his fag and the other room captains, all of whom looked back at him and nodded.

"Yes." he muttered as I wiggled through the crowd, tugging the hood of his school cloak back up over his face. "Everyone's here."

Since I knew Ciel was likely in a position to observe the prefects –and also in a tree, if memory served correctly– I cast a glance around at the dim skyline as I burrowed out of the milling crowd of mixed dorm residents, and thought I saw a faint shadow on a murky tangled thread of what might have been tree limbs at the back of the crowd. I couldn't flip him the bird without drawing attention of the people around me, but I did glare and wrinkle my nose in a way that suggested a flipped bird would be forthcoming in his near future.

The prefects finished their huddled conversation and began barking orders as the students stopped milling about and started acting with more purpose.

"Green House! We need water here at the double, you lot!"

"Notify the masters!"

"Blue House! Top the other houses and bring water quickly!"

"Red House! Don't fall behind now!"

Suddenly, there was a subtle vibration in the packed earth underneath my feet, accompanied by heavy, muffled thumps and, oddly enough, the creaking of ropes and faint splashing of water. Sure enough, Sebastian broke out across the lawn from near the stables, riding the elephant Soma had come in on, which had a rowboat slung over each side, both of which were filled with stacks of wooden buckets brimming with water. Several dozen more of those buckets were slung over its trunk, also filled with water.

"Everyone! If it is water you seek, I have some right here!" Sebastian called sharply, as the prefects gawked.

"Mister Michaelis, sir?!" Laurence Bluer gasped incredulously as Soma perked up upon seeing his elephant. He jogged over along with the rest of the mob as buckets were distributed, but lingered as everyone plucked the trunk clean, patting the heavily-breathing elephant and praising him as Sebastian leapt off.

"Quickly extinguish the fire before it spreads!" he commanded, grabbing a bucket of his own.

"All right! Green House, follow me!" Edward said, hefting his two buckets as his in-earshot-underlings saluted.

"Yes, sir!"

"Blue House will be heading in too!" Clayton barked.

"Right!"

"STAY OUT OF PURPLE HOUSE!" Violet yelled.

There was a startled pause as Clayton turned to him. "B-but-"

"Is this truly the time to be saying such a silly thing, you fool?!" Soma barked, finishing the wordless thoughts of everyone here as he pushed through the crowd to point at Violet with the very same hand that clutched a bucket. "You! You're supposed to be the leader of Purple House, are you not?! Your worthless pride won't protect your people, you know! And if you can't protect your people, then you're a sorry excuse for a leader!"

"Why you-!" Cheslock, Violet's fag, snarled furiously as he seized Soma by the lapels of his shirt. "Who d'you think you're flapping yer gums at?!"

"Cheslock. It's fine…" Violet said placatingly, though his hand was clenched at his side. "Let's have them lend us a hand."

"…yes." Cheslock mumbled grudgingly.

"Keep your mouth covered at all times!" Edward said as he pulled a handkerchief over his face, preparing to head up the path. "Don't inhale the smoke!"

"Do not go about unwittingly opening doors! Doing so can cause the fire to flare up!" Clayton called as the students began to head up the path towards the front doors, which were beginning to emit a thick stream of white smoke.

"Those who have been injured, please come this way!" Harcourt, who had replaced Maurice Cole as Redmond's fag, said as he waved his hand above the crowd.

Cheslock ground his teeth. "I'll get you for this, you sods!" he snarled, then sucked in a deep breath. "I'll…definitely return the favor! Just you wait!"

The other fags snickered at the faux-tsundere (or would it be reverse tsundere?) display as Cheslock turned back to his own coterie and began exhorting them to not fall behind. I unknotted my scarf and plunged it into a bucket, quickly wrapping the dripping fabric around my face again –taking special care to plaster it over my mouth and nose– before grabbing selfsame bucket and plunging ahead with the crowd. There were too many disorganized elements to start a fireman's line –passing empty buckets back and full buckets ahead until the gulls ones reached the end where someone was dousing the fire and the empty ones reached a water source– and so we all were apparently going for the first lick of flames we saw and dumping our bucket on it.

Inefficient, but the fire wasn't that big, and we were dousing it en mass. Hopefully, this would be enough.

As expected, there was some fuss and bother at the doors, what with those with empty buckets having to try and press back out through the crowd after they dumped their payload, but it was soon sorted out as the milling mass of students quickly spindled into a single-file line going in the doors with determination and another rushing out, dripping buckets in hand as they sprinted for the elephant. The right-hand wing wasn't entirely aflame, but there was at least one room, by my count, that was definitely up in smoke by this point, and from the thick waterfalls of smoke ascending into the night sky, multiple other rooms had caught fire, and probably at least one hallway, if the smoke rolling out of the massive double doors was any indication.

Damn.

I thanked whatever dubious deity that had taken an interest in my life that at least all the Violet Wolf residents had gotten out of here alive and, if the shouts I had caught outside were any indication, mostly if not completely unharmed. Seeing the aftermath now in real life and real time, as I crossed the threshold and immediately saw the flickering red of fire in an adjoining hallway on the right, Ciel had taken a serious moral and ethical risk in tossing that lantern into the dormitory to –quite literally– smoke out his prey.

What is it with Ciel and fire? I thought as I grimly plunged ahead with the hollow roar and heat of flames in my ears, eyes watering from the smoke and firmly fixed on the back of the dude in front of me. First he did that whole thing with burning down the manor where that creep Baron Kelvin kept the kids…now this…and when we get to Sieglinde's place, they set fire to that facility too…

Well, with the lack of proper detection sciences in this day and age, fire was a perfect way to cover your tracks. Shit happened with lanterns and candles and open flame and so on, and terrible accidents were frequent in a time period that also had a substandard fire brigade and tons of highly flammable building materials –at least by modern standards. It wasn't at all odd for things to burn down, what with all the wood and oil and cotton and other such fuel near open flames and gaslights. (Thank god electricity eventually caught on.)

So if Ciel set fire to an establishment, who was to know what had happened there? No one, that's who. It wasn't at all odd that fire seemed to be his favorite method of covering his tracks.

Though, given as his parents died in the fire that consumed his house, and he also set fire to that cultist's place when he got out with Sebastian, I'm fairly sure a psychologist would have some pretty interesting things to say about Ciel's obsession with using flames.

I shook those thoughts out of my head as I found myself at the front of the line as the guy in front of me dumped his bucket and turned back. Damn near at the heart of the spreading fire, the heat was stifling, the stench of burning wood coated in a variety of different polishes and varnishes choking, as a rippling carpet of white-hot blossoms of flame bloomed in streaks and waves across the hallway, reaching with greedy tongues from a door on the righthand side, now completely burned away with only a few fragile, jagged cinder-shells of planks hanging on to the edges like rotten teeth.

I dumped my water on the neared outstretched lick of flame, making sure to douse it completely and soak the floorboards beneath, and went back for another bucket.

***Time Skip***

One sooty, ash-streaked night later, I dragged myself out of bed after a pathetic hour or so of sleep with the rest of Green House, most of whom were as baggy-eyed and sore-throated as myself. The usual clinks and sloshes of breakfast was interspersed with hacking coughs from damn near every table, as infrequent but continuous as the loudest sounds of us eating food. Even after soaking my scarf to add an extra layer of protection, I still woke up with a dry, raspy throat that cup after cup of tea did little to restore, and coughed occasionally during fencing and cricket –hard, painful, throat-scouring coughs, too.

So it was in something of a vengeful mood that I headed off after Ciel during afternoon break, sleeves metaphorically rolled up and tongue heavy with words I intended to deliver, most of which were none too kind, many of which were to the general tune of "What the fuck dude?!"

Ah, but of course I wouldn't actually be allowed to make contact with him in that mood. I had barely stormed up to the fence of the Blue House dorm when I felt a tug on the back of my mourning coat, which swiftly transmuted into a pull as I was yoinked straight off my feet and dragged in the wake of a calmly sauntering Sebastian Michaelis, who was walking in the opposite direction.

"Do you just have a tracer on me, you damn demonic bastard?" I groaned sullenly, not bothering to resist his grip as Sebastian pulled me along a deserted part of the grounds near the rear of the Blue House dorms and the back of my heels dragged through the dirt.

"I occasionally think it prudent." was his calm reply without looking back at me. "You are, after all, extremely young and extraordinarily clumsy, and your grasp of magic means your accidents will be disproportionally troublesome to the efforts of the young lord."

My eye twitched. "Oh, so I'm an incompetent toddler now, huh?"

"Would you prefer if I returned to treating you in the same manner as a competent, graduated member of your profession?" Sebastian asked archly as he strolled around what seemed to be a garden shed.

"Doesn't said treatment of yours involve dismemberment?"

"Most usually, yes. However, you are under my master's employ, and thus safe."

"Safe or not, I think I'll pass."

"Marvelous." Sebastian said as he stopped, moved his arm out in front of himself with me in tow, and dropped me to stand directly before him, back to the wall of the small building. With a high fence and the higher wall that surrounded the school on two other sides, we were fairly well hidden from any passersby, and he offered me his usual angelic "I'm about to rip someone in two so pray it's not you" smile, closing his eyes. "Now, I understand you have some grievances to air with the young master? Please, state them all to me and I shall relay them verbatim."

I snorted and rolled my eyes, folding my arms. "Oh, sure you will."

"Absolutely."

"Even if I call him a homicidal two-faced little shit?"

Sebastian's smile twitched a little. "Especially in that case, Madame –aha, Milord Thompson."

"Ha ha ha, I'm a boy now." I muttered, watching a smirk slide under the angelic look as Sebastian primly corrected himself. A begrudging smirk crept onto my own face as I realized one of the underlying implications of his statement. "How often do you get to insult him like that, huh?"

Sebastian's angelic grin brightened: I could practically feel the anime sparkles glinting off his teeth, glasses, and the background around him. "Why, Milord Thompson, a mere servant such as I would never presume to address my lord in such a fashion." he said sweetly, then affected a mournfully dutiful, apologetic expression. "Nonetheless, please endeavor to express yourself to him through me to your heart's content. Do not feel as though you must soften your language around me. I assure you, I shall communicate every word to him with the utmost zeal."

Oh I just bet you will. I thought with a snort and a sneaking grin.

Reminded of why this conversation was happening, though, soured my mood again, and for lack of any other aggressive moves to make, since I wasn't entirely certain Sebastian would even understand it if I flipped him the bird, I folded my arms tighter against my half-bound chest and glared at him. "Well, people could've fucking died last night, for starters."

One immaculate black eyebrow rose. "And?"

Ah, right. Demon.

I inhaled slowly and deeply through my nose, hoping it wouldn't start up a cough again as the air tickled my raw throat. "Look, Sebastian, I get that you couldn't give less of a shit if the entire goddamn school burned down, but Ciel isn't like you, and quite frankly, he shouldn't be like you."

Sebastian closed his eyes behind his glasses and shrugged carelessly. "I'm well aware of that."

"Problem is, he is sort of starting to get like you. What happened last night –that was dangerous. A lot of innocent people could've been hurt."

The disguised demonic butler didn't say anything when he opened his eyes again, but from the subtly impatient expression on his face, I got the sense he neither appreciated nor cared for me lecturing him about the value of human life like a sickeningly sweet and simplified preschool commercial, and I groaned in defeat.

"Look, is it some sort of flavor boost if he's all cold and cruel and whatnot when you eat him, huh? Or do you just not give a damn about his moral decisions because you're a demon?"

Sebastian's arm suddenly slammed against the wall near my face, and I jerked sideways, paling, as he splayed his gloved hand in classic lean-over-someone-to-intimidate-or-seduce-them style on the creaking wood, looming over me as I pressed back against the wall, heart pounding. The intimidation factor was certainly working –Sebastian was at least six feet and change, broad-shouldered for all his bishounen slender physique, and, y'know, a demon. Having him all up in my personal space, with the added threat/implication of his arm right next to my head (an arm and hand I knew were easily capable of shearing through bone and flesh if he swung it hard enough, to say nothing of the transformational shadow properties of his demonic flesh) was fucking terrifying. Knowing him, this blatantly overt tactic was because I could technically –and that was a very, very loose "technically"– affect or control him more easily than the average monkey on the sidewalk, and therefore needed to be cowed out of even thinking in such a line.

Ah well, joke's on Sebastian. I don't even know how to do that.

"Miss Thompson." he said in a low, quiet voice from a mere few inches away as his elongated pupils burned into mine with a terrifying lack of emotion. "You begin to tire me. Are you here to lecture, or are you merely here because you are upset at the inconvenience the fire last night has caused you?"

"You-"

"You reek of soot." he interrupted coldly, red eyes shining. "Your voice is raw. You cough on merest occasion. All this will go away within a matter of days, and none at Weston are much worse injured, certainly none permanently. What cause, what right have you to complain?"

"It could've been worse!" I spat.

"But it was not. My master could have ordered me to take hostage the families of the prefects to induce them to talk, for we all know that they guard the heart of the secret to Derrick's disappearance. But he has not. He could have ordered me to torture the prefects for aforesaid information, and as mere human students, you know they would talk quickly if I were the one holding the blade. But he has not. Your kind concerns for his moral health are, as they say, unfounded."

I swallowed silently, gathering my nerve, and managed to muster a glare. "If the best you can say of a decision is "It could be worse" then it really wasn't that good a decision." I said sourly.

Sebastian huffed softly, a smirk curling up the corners of his pale mouth.

"Power intoxicates." he said after a moment. "As a magician, you surely know that much."

I had a moment of nonplussed blinking at the sudden oblique subject shift, before years of fandom discourse over various magical characters and plots caught up with me and I "ah"ed softly.

Having direct control over Sebastian, who was basically a cheat code personified in Victorian England, would definitely be a heady rush: years of wielding that incredible power probably didn't do much to tone down Ciel's already-appreciable ego (the kid was a wicked sharp genius and he knew it, after all), and if I vaguely remembered, well, pretty much all of Ciel's character interactions in the manga correctly, he wasn't exactly…accepting of other people's efforts to include him in their lives. Sadly, given as he was like ten when the cult had kidnapped him and ten-year-olds, even scary smart ones, were not exactly known for their acute foresight, Ciel had probably mentally taken a step back from his own future, on the logic that he was living purely for revenge's sake and since Sebastian would, inevitably, eventually devour his soul, his own life and self weren't exactly worth much outside aforementioned vengeful purposes, and as such, there was no reason to bother cultivating ties with other people.

And because of that, Ciel was not exactly going to be susceptible to other people, y'know, trying to reason with him, because no one was really close enough to do the reasoning in any way he would accept. Being a magician and whatnot, I personally could probably find a way to tie Ciel to a chair in front of a blackboard titled "Why You Should Not Be An Asshole," but I had a feeling I wouldn't get more than a few slides into that metaphorical presentation before Sebastian kicked the door down.

Then again, Sebastian had a habit of dragging his heels when Ciel was not in immediate danger of death. I might actually get all the way through it.

But combining that dangerously self-disregarding subconscious conviction and its attendant lack of people with the authority to morally reason with Ciel, with the constant power trip of holding Sebastian's leash, knowing he could get out of anything he got into with a few minutes of plotting and his demonic pawn…well, my moral fiber would start crumbling after a while too, honestly.

Wait, is that crumble? Or is it unravel? What's the verb form for moral fiber and its dissolution?

There is an excessively intimidating and possibly pissed demon man right in front of you maybe focus on that.

"Not to like, step on your toes or whatever in the metaphorical soul kitchen," I began warily, raising my hands in an I-surrender gesture. "-but I'm going to at least try and pull Ciel back from the 'Everything in the world answers to me because I can make it so with my demon and uncanny intelligence' power trip, because eventually he is going to lose at something, and he should be prepared for it. Also its majorly unhealthy for him to think like he's generally thinking right now."

Sebastian smiled angelically –and leaned away from me, removing his hand, as my lungs expanded in a whoosh of relief.

"Many have tried. All have failed." he said, which was a deeply ominous statement considering how few people had tried to help Ciel in that regard. Did Sebastian mean generally, as in people had tried to help the souls he'd devoured in the past, or that there had been far more than what Yana had covered in her series in regards to the people surrounding Ciel and Sebastian?

I was leaning towards the first one, though that didn't exactly make me feel better.

"About the tournament arc, also," I said, figuring I might as well get this out of the way sooner rather than later. "-Ciel doesn't need my help with that, right? Because I've kinda gotten fond of Greenhill and the other cricket players and I'd rather not sabotage them if I can help it."

Sebastian raised a single black eyebrow. "Tournament arc?"

I blinked. "Yeah, I-"

Processing prior statement.

Oh shit.

Heat crept over my face as I turned bright red, hastily blurting out "The cricket tournament! I meant the cricket tournament!"

Sebastian smirked as my face glowed with embarrassment, eyes languidly wandering over to trace aimlessly along the roof. "Tournament arc." he mused quietly to himself, mulling over the phrase as I wondered if it would be logistically feasible to grab a gardening implement or something and whack him over the head in the hopes it erased his memory of the past minute. "Can I assume this is a future term used to describe the events of a particular sporting event in a story?"

"Fuck you." I muttered, wanting to die and knowing the ordinarily-murderous-in-regards-to-myself Sebastian was not even remotely going to oblige me.

"It's amusing to note that your obsession with fictional works is so strong that you cannot differentiate between that and reality." Sebastian said, with an angelic smile, as he lazily folded his arms across his chest. Sourly, I wished that the crucifix dangling from his neck would burn his arms, but alas, no such luck.

"Fuck you!"

***Time Skip***

After an admittedly childish further five or so minutes of back-and-forth with Sebastian, I went along with the rest of my day, though my unease spiked again as I approached the cricket pitch later that afternoon and saw Greenhill looking suspiciously alert in my general direction. I gulped as he immediately brightened upon seeing me, and my misgivings rose with every step as the Green House prefect started walking rapidly in my direction. Frantically, I ran through the laundry list of things I might've done that would cause the prefect to have an interest in me –my talk with Sebastian had been, to most intents and appearances, a student to a Housemaster, so that was chill, I hadn't really snuck out of the dorm recently, and if that was what I was being nailed for, Greenhill probably wouldn't be looking so pleased, and it wasn't like I was going to be recruited for the cricket team in some weird Mary-Sue-esque plot centrifuge, since the Green House team already existed and spent most of their time practicing together to increase their skill and teamwork, and it wasn't like I was about to be propositioned in the other way, because the Victorians called homosexuality the love that dare not speak its name for a reason, and this was a very public pitch. Was my homework up to date? I couldn't see how or why Greenhill would grill me for that specifically, doubly not when there was sport to do right now.

I'm pretty sure, had this been an actual anime for me still, question marks would be floating above my head as nervous sweat droplets ran down my blanked-out face, but Greenhill (very rapidly!) arrived himself to lay any confused doubts of mine to rest.

"Ryan!" he said loudly, grabbing and wringing my hand in an ominously hearty handshake as my foreboding increased. "I have good news for you!"

"Uh…huh…" I said slowly, heart slowly sinking down to my leather shoes. "About what?"

"You remember Henry Mildmay St. John? The Viscount Bolingbroke?"

"Ahhh…" I blinked back, trying to jog loose the reason why that name actually was familiar. Gosh darn Victorians and their arm-long titles.

Oh shit.

"W-wasn't he one of the sluggers on our team?" I asked nervously, not liking the direction this was going in.

"Well, unfortunately, it seems he has taken sick after the fire, so-"

Oh fuck oh no oh fuck oh no oh fuck oh no-

"-given as you seem to be a more than adequate player-"

-no no nO NO NO NO NO NO-

"-I thought to offer you the position of replacement!" Greenhill finished proudly. "It is a great honor, especially for a transfer student such as yourself."

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!

C'mon, seriously?! Seriously!? What anime protagonist bullshit is this?!

"Uh, a-are you sure that's a good idea?" I stammered, sweating rapidly. "I mean, I'm an American transfer, this is like a super-big British deal, its tradition," You killed a man for tradition please please come with me on this one. "-a-and I wouldn't want to like, step on any toes. Plus, I just learned to play cricket like a month ago! I'm not even that good!"

To those who wonder, no, I wasn't particularly opposed to playing cricket at the sides of my sort've-friends at Green House. Heck, I'd probably be just as excited as Greenhill, except there was one excruciatingly crucial detail that I knew and he didn't: going Green, as it were (hehe, puns) would put me in direct opposition to Ciel, who would without question be playing on the side of the Blue team.

I would be playing opposite sides against Ciel fucking Phantomhive.

Granted, I wasn't so petty as to think something fatal would occur, or that Ciel would take this as a genuine act of betrayal. No no. He'd go at this just the same as it would be if I hadn't been popped into this reality and somehow finagled into probably-taking this nameless character's place. And hey, this was a schoolyard competition, so, well, Ciel would be using considerably tamer methods than what he'd deployed in the Murders arc.

My problem with that was that Ciel's methods would include dosing his enemies with laxatives and over-the-edge aiming-at-the-face tactics, and as I had inadvertently discovered over the course of these past few months of habituation, getting hit in the face with a cricket ball really hurt. (The laxatives were of less concern, since I vaguely remembered that it was only Red House that got them and also I could just not eat anything during the matches that I didn't make myself.)

"That is of no matter!" Greenhill blustered, concern plastered all over his annoyingly honest face. "You easily imbedded yourself within the team-" Because you play with them and I was trying to ingratiate myself with you. "-you work well with others, you have a solidly decent slug-" Because I practice shooting at things and daily muscle exercises. "-and you have the natural turn of athletic spirit that we are proud to exemplify here at the Green Lion House." Because I obsessively try to keep in shape so I don't get caught flatfooted in all this adventuring nonsense.

He clasped my shoulder harder, as if he could squeeze belief into me by sheer force, and I stiffened as my bandages rubbed against my chest.

"Ah, uh, yeah, sure!" I squeaked, quickly bobbing my shoulder out of his grip and backing away as I scratched the back of my head. "That's uh, great! Sounds great! I'll, uh, be there right away justletmegogetmybatI'llberightback!"

With that hasty afterthought I took to my heels, leaving a bewildered Greenhill in my wake as I bolted back towards the changing building. Every muscle-bound meathead that could swing a cricket bat were all romping about on the pitch with great vigor right now, so I was pretty safe in assuming I was alone as I darted inside and all but slammed the door shut.

I then sucked in a deep, fortifying breath, and let it out slowly as I leaned against the cool wood of the door. That had been just a bit too close for my peace of mind.

While the illusion I had cast over myself completely covered every part of my body, from all angles, clothed or unclothed, it did not cover the sense of touch: to again simplify things into a non-magical metaphor, I was basically wearing a hologram. I would look like a boy, walk like a boy, and due to the charm I cast on my vocal cords, I'd sound like a boy (a girly one, to be admitted, but I wasn't really sweating the details at this point), but the one thing I couldn't disguise with any amount of magic (or at least the magic currently at my command) was the fact my real body was not, in any way, shaped like a boy's. (Okay, maybe I had some really nice biceps and leg muscles, but except for that, nothing.) Anyone who put their hands on or near what appeared to be my pecs would swiftly figure out via touch that I had something far different going on upstairs, although I did feel reasonably secure in the fact that no one would try to grab me between the legs (or something similar) and find out my real gender that way.

Luckily for me, my chest wasn't anything as ample as most anime females, or else I'd be having real difficulties with this charade –really all I had to do was make sure nobody brushed past my front in a crowded space, or something like what had just happened with Greenhill, wherein someone with very broad hands would attempt an encouraging/manly shoulder clasp and feel the beginning curve of my chest with the heel of their palm. Sneak hugs from behind were also rather risky, but I was usually warned of the approaching hugger beforehand by their hurried footsteps and could step aside, and besides, the proper English gentleman of this age usually did not deign to embrace his peers on a daily basis. Manly handshakes (or clapping each other on the shoulder/back if truly excited) were infinitely preferable, and although ordinarily the fragility of the heteronormative male's ego in this age was alternatively amusing and pitiful to me, in this case it made my life a heck of a lot easier. (Plus these guys were gentlemen and nobles from Victorian Great Britain, renowned the world over for being stuffy and repressed.)

In any case, just now Greenhill had been a mere slightly-tighter squeeze or shift of his wrist away from at least feeling the second layer of bandages and fabric I used to squish my chest down as much as possible, if not the beginning very-not-male swell of my breasts, but luckily, hopefully, I had managed to escape in time. If not, well, I could zap his brain with a forgetfulness spell again. I was getting the hang of those. I probably wouldn't fry him into a drooling monkey.

Probably.

Discarding thoughts of lobotomy via poor magic spells, I pushed away from the door and began searching for my bat. I had a long couple weeks ahead of me…

Dear Sir,

I regret, in the strongest possible terms, to inform you that I have been selected to serve in the hothouse you so despise. Rest assured, though I shall not do anything as petty as sabotage their workings, I shall certainly not put forth my full efforts as a member of this team, as my sympathies, as always, reside entirely with you.

–A Fellow Gardener

My Friend,

I commend you most heartily for your honesty. Humans are such spiteful creatures, are we not? I blush to admit that even I might not act with such restraint were our positions reversed. Nonetheless, your sympathies are noted and appreciated, and may I ask, with another blush, that you perhaps ignore any oddities that may occur in your tenure at this hothouse?

–Your Fellow in the City

It took some doing, particularly in regards to Nina sewing me up another of those confangled boy's costumes, but when the evening of June 3rd rolled around, I was ready with the rest of the Green Lion team to strut my stuff at the opening party.

My clanky, pauldroned, gauntleted, greaved, chest-plated, chain-mailed stuff.

And I had a sword, too. Just for more thematic appropriateness.

…yeah, so the Green Lion House's…introductory costumes?…were basically just straight-up plate armor (with a hooded mail shirt) and a green tunic with our house emblem embroidered on the front. Deeply uncomfortable for me, or at least, it would have been if Miss Nina hadn't come in clutch with a female-adjusted chestplate so I wouldn't be half-strangled to death during the festivities: so as things currently stood, with the rest of the team arrayed in a double-line behind Edward and Greenhill, I was pretty excited. Ciel hadn't promised immediate fiery retribution for my inadvertent betrayal, I got an absolutely sick cosplay knight costume for future nerdery, and the complex dance of our entrance basically involved us bursting through our doors (the Weston Grand Dining Hall had four separate paneled double-doors leading into the room with each house's crest laid over the top, if you please) and marching along a red carpet to a three-step podium at the center of the room, which Greenhill would ascend and, with his fellow prefects, light a huge cup resting on said podium. Pretty simple.

"Team representatives of each house, come forth!" the Vice Headmaster, Johann Agares, said loudly from the other room as our shoulders all unanimously straightened under the heavy burden of our armor. The floor began to shake under our disciplined feet as we followed our cue amid cries of awe and surprise from the dining hall –teams, apparently, went in order of success at the last tournament, which meant that we were first to march into that room at the opening statement.

(Part of me was wondering if whoever designed these costumes had gone a bit overboard, as the floor continued to shake at our absolutely robotic heavy-plated marching and the doors burst open.)

"H-here they come!"

"Their overwhelming physical prowess and teamwork are second to none!"

The enthusiastic cries of the crowd were cut off by the Vice Headmaster's commanding tones. "Absolute champions, top of the world! The Green Lions!"

The assorted students and guests all cheered under the rafters shook as we tromped our way out across the floor, me trying very hard not to sink into my armor and blush at the uproarious attention we were getting. Personally speaking, at least, I was getting a wicked case of imposter's syndrome. I was good at the sport because my tangential skills –running, shooting, reflexes– were based on the hefty desire to not die when faced with my constant lethal obstacles, not out of any desire to master the sport, and I wasn't going into this much enthusiasm (aside from watching fictional things happened), certainly not even a particle as much as all the students and sportsmen around me.

Our team did make a showing, though, I guess.

The plebeians, like me, held typical knight broadswords in a two-handed salute before our chest, staring out past the shining blades as we marched along after Edward, who carried a banner with our house emblem, as he walked behind Greenhill, who carried a flaming metal torch wrought with holly leaves wound around it, with several vines clenched in the jaws of the lion's-head wrought on the front, and had the special distinction of also wearing a cape clasped at his shoulders and an open-faced helmet with a hinged front. House Prefect rules or Team Captain rules, I wasn't sure, and since he filled both roles, its not like it mattered.

"Big brooother! You look terribly handsome!" I heard Lizzie's distinctive squeal from the crowd, and was shaken out of my discomfort enough to grin a little.

Lizzie blinked as a rose petal showered past her on a deluge of scent, and I broke discipline enough to flick my eyes to the side with a slight nonplussed smirk, seeing a fountain of the same petals spiraling outwards from the door beside ours.

"L-look! It's the second-place house that drove Green House into a corner last year!"

"Captivating spectators with their elegant plays…"

I wasn't 100% on medieval fashion, but the flat caps with plumes of feathers and ermine-lined red coats, along with the paneled gold necklaces with a pendant of the house's crest, I felt that there was a distinctly "historical aristocracy" note to whatever Redmond and the other cricket players were wearing, with the prefect carrying a three-branched candlestick with a sinuous fox curling over the middle base of one of its lit tapers and Joanne Harcourt behind him carrying the house banner. The others, like us, also carried tokens of their own, but unlike us, the other members of the Red House team carried…roses. They were all deadass carrying long-stemmed red roses, which they flourished (elegantly!) at the crowd.

"Brilliant Eden, a garden of fine plays! The Scarlet Foxes!"

Squeals resounded through the room from nearly every unattached female in radius as I rolled my eyes a little, shaking my head as I returned my focused to our ordered marching towards the podium.

We had adjusted our pace, subtly, so that Red House (and presumably all the other houses) could reach the podium on time, so we were barely halfway there when suddenly, somehow, every light in the room aside from Greenhill's torch and Redmond's candelabra went out –and I mean every light, which was both impressive and disturbing considering that it was probably hundreds of individual candles both arranged in two-tier candelabrums on the ground and chandeliers over twenty feet above our heads, plus about a dozen dished braziers hung on the walls midway between the two.

We were not left to suffer in mostly-utter darkness for long though, as a dozen foxfire-like flames slowly bloomed in the pitchy black shade on the other side of the room, amid much shivering and quiet shaking from the other house denizens.

"C-could this be…the house team they say throws their opponents into confusion with their unpredictably tricky plays?"

The lights balled up and coalesced to flicker along the gnarl-headed staffs –which was apparently what Violet House residents got instead of roses or swords– of the Violet House team, all of which were clustered several meters away from their opening door, including Violet, who was in the lead with the most boss lantern I had ever seen, a spidery black confection of metal and glass swinging from the closed jaws of a wolf skull, which had some of its earthly shape returned to it the form of a painted design on its forehead that branched into two pointed ears of black lace and fabric, from which dangled shimmering, clattering strings of jet beads. This whole apparatus was mounted on yet another staff, and it swung carelessly as Violet shuffled forward, followed by the rest of his team in deep hooded robes of ominous purple.

"The swarming specters of the ghost legion! The Violet Wolves!"

Shrieks resounded through the room at their unexpected style and place of entry as the lights, somehow, flickered to life again, while I quietly fumed at the lost opportunity to have one of those sweet robes and that absolute genius piece of a lantern.

Well I know what I'm making when I get back to a place with modern materials.

My devious prop designs were interrupted by the high whistle of some kind of bird, and I looked up with surprise, and some trepidation, to see a flock of owls circling above the audience, who were similarly (nervously) transfixed.

"Those birds are…"

"That house, is it?"

"Though their physical strength leaves much to be desired, they aim for an opportunity to win the championship with their strategic game plans."

Perhaps it was the ominously unenthusiastic announcement, but I could swear even the door on the opposite side of the room creaked open timidly rather than ominously, like the Violet Wolves beside them, and an owl winged its way down to land on Lawrence Bluer's crooked and outstretched arm, while he used his other to carry another lantern dangling on a short pole. This had a miniature owl outstretched in flight, which, not gonna lie, was neat, but not as neat as a fucking wolf's skull. (Hopefully humanely killed, but since wolves were probably extinct in Britain at this point in history, I actually did have a reasonable chance of hoping.)

"Attack of the cornered rats, God only knows. The Sapphire Owls!"

There was almost dead silence, broken only by fairly unenthusiastic but rigidly polite Victorian clapping all around (even from their own house members, ouch), and I winced in sympathy.

"KYAAAH! CIEL, YOU LOOK ABSOLUTELY CHARMING! GIVE IT YOUR BEEEEEST!" Lizzie cried at maximum volume, waving her hand frantically at the red-faced earl as the rest of the room murmured or coughed in barely-polite awkwardness.

I tried to wipe an insubordinate smirk off my face, but was only moderately successful as all four teams reached the pedestal in perfect unison and paused, as the prefects took the lead and solemnly ascended the steps with their various on-fire props.

"Now light the flame of Saint George!" Vice Headmaster Agares cried loudly from his place on a lectern near the head of the hall, and Greenhill extended his torch, Redmond his candelabra, and the others their lanterns towards the apparently-primed kindling on the surface of the wide and deep cup.

"We, the players…" Greenhill began.

"…in accordance with the great tradition of Weston College…" Bluer continued.

"…shall fight fair and square until the very end." said Redmond.

"This we do solemnly swear." Violet finished, and the large cup/torch went up with a satisfying whoosh of flames, and the crowd erupted into its most enthusiastic cheering yet as the prefects swiveled and marched back to their teams.

"Now, I do hereby declare open the Interhouse Cricket Tournament of 1889!" Vice Headmaster Agares shouted as the entire gathering in the Grand Dining Hall roared with one, extremely enthusiastic, voice.

7.43 PM, USA Central Time