*Chapter 7: Late Night Party*
With the sun disappearing quickly over the horizon, Alice was running like a madwoman around the dorm making sure she had everything she needed for covering the charity event.
"Note pad, check, pen, check..." she murmured.
A half hour later, she emerged from her bedroom wearing a fancy green dress and placed everything that was needed into her handbag. The blonde teen then noticed that her partner was nowhere to be seen.
"Rem! C'mon, we're going to be late!" she called out.
"Hang on, I'm coming..." Rem called back.
She walked out of her own room checking her camera, clad in a fresh set of her school uniform. Alice nearly threw a fit.
"Rem! This is a formal event!" she squealed, pointing to the smaller teen's attire.
Rem just looked at her dorm mate as if she had gone insane.
"...The school uniform isn't formal and representative?" she asked pointedly.
Alice let out an exasperated sigh and face palmed while shaking her head. While Rem was somewhat correct, not much could really be done about it. As it was, they were running out of time.
"C'mon, let's go before we miss the bus." Alice said, grabbing a hold of Rem's wrist and yanking her out of the dorm.
The girls headed to the nearest bus stop where they boarded a city bus fifteen minutes later. They headed to a part of town where most people had extravagant looking houses, and a Porsche, BMW, or Jaguar sitting in their driveways. Rem could already feel herself wanting to throw up. When they arrived at the venue of the charity, that feeling got stronger.
"Oh God..." she moaned.
"It's not that bad, Rem." Alice said, rolling her eyes. She thought her friend was being melodramatic.
"No, of course not...IT'S WORSE!"
"Just try to enjoy yourself."
Rem mentally groaned as she imagined that would be quite impossible.
The pair showed their school IDs and invitations to the usher at the entrance of the outdoor venue before going in. Rem could easily picture her MTV idols, Knumbskullz, tearing the whole place apart with their comedic antics. The girls sat down amongst the small crowd in white plastic foldable chairs.
"What's this thing for again?" Rem whispered as the man hosting the event got behind a podium to deliver a short commencement speech.
"It's a charity fundraising for renovations to the hospital." Alice whispered back.
"...the one we passed down the block?"
"Yup."
Rem gave a blank stare as her mind went deep into thought.
...Now that I think about it, I recall going there a time or two...when my folks were still around...
They saw quietly until the speech was over and everyone in attendance stood up to applause. Rem was brought out of her thoughts when Alice gave her a nudge, indicating that the blonde teen wanted her to start taking pictures. Suppressing a sigh, Rem tinkered with her camera settings and snapped a shot of the charity organizer shaking hands with others as the rest of the crowd began striking up conversations with each other. Then, a slightly gentle breeze of cold Autumn air blew past Rem, ruffling her fur and skirt, causing her to shiver a little.
xxxxxx
The breeze continued outside of the venue, carrying along fallen leave onto the sidewalks and roads. It also carried something else. Something that definitely caught the attention of a paddleball playing vampire, causing him to come to a sudden halt when his keen nose inhaled the air...
xxxxxx
Only about an hour and a half into the event, Rem could already feel herself growing quite weary. Social awkwardness and impatience to get to the relatively safety of their dormitory kicked in as she irritably watched Alice interview a few people for her article in the school paper. Rem had already gotten more than enough pictures for this thing, dang it.
...C'mon, Alice. Speed it up.
Scowling, Rem went through her camera to make sure it was still on the settings she had placed it at, and the battery still good. Heaven forbid if she just happened to miss something that might compromise her pictures and make Alice go through the freaking roof when she found that Rem had nothing to give her .
Then, Rem got a weird feeling that someone was suddenly staring her down. She ignored it at first, chalking it up to some snooty rich jerk mentally criticizing her in some way-which also had her resisting the urge to give the individual an obscene hand gesture. But the feeling persisted, especially after this person had somehow appeared a few feet away. Now it felt like he was scrutinizing her appearance, as if he were carefully trying to recall or memorize every aspect. After a few minutes, Rem finally had enough.
"Can I help you with something?" she snapped lowly at the individual without looking up from her camera.
"Eeeeeehhhhh, not in such." the person quirked, instantly becoming friendly.
Rem looked up and saw a boy with similar attributes as her, except slightly taller, paler, with darker circles under his eyes, and a bright red nose. That and he wore mostly black. Except for maybe his long coat which looked kinda cool, Rem was hardly impressed.
"You know, you're a bit late for Halloween there, dude." Rem murmured back to him.
"Well, ain't that a shame? I coulda sworn I marked it on my calendar." he quipped in a half joking and half sarcastic manner.
Now Rem had a massive urge to punch him, even though violence to her was the very last resort. After all, she was brought up the last ten years by nuns for pity sakes.
"Are you naturally this annoying?" the teen grumbled.
"I try." the boy replied with a big wide grin gracing his features. "So, you've been here long?"
"If you're referring to this snooze fest, been here for an hour or two; although I lost count after twenty minutes, so I'm not entirely sure. The general area on the other hand, I've been here since birth."
Rem didn't know why on earth she was telling him all this, a total stranger. She also couldn't help but notice how perturbed and confused the seemed when he heard all that; as if he wanted to very much contradict her. Yet, he masterfully hid it with a goofy and zany persona. A few seconds later, her dorm mate came walking by.
"Hey there, how's my photographer doing?" Alice cheerfully asked as she stowed away her notepad into her handbag.
"She's got more than enough pics to cover two pages of the freaking yearbook." Rem ranted irritably. "Now can we please ditch this place?"
"Oooo, into photography, are we?" the boy said, sounding amused and arching his brows up and down. "Have I seen your work in the National Geographic?"
Now Rem really wanted to slug him.
"Oh I'm sorry, I didn't realize you two were talking." Alice apologized, feeling rather rude to have 'butted in'.
"...we're not." Rem growled through her teeth.
"Did you even introduce yourself?" the blonde exclaimed, shaking her head when her dorm mate didn't answer right away, and turned towards the boy. "I'm Alice Westwood, and this is my best friend and dorm mate, Rem Roth. She's a bit on the shy side, so don't hold her rudeness against her."
Rem could feel herself getting more and more pissed off at this situation. The boy on the other hand, remained ever more humorously polite.
"I'm Yakko Warner." he said, shaking hands with Alice, before glancing at Rem's attire. "Just dropped into America. You ladies on what they call a 'school field trip'?"
"Well, it's an assignment, actually." Alice explained. "I'm writing an article for our school paper and Rem's providing the pictures. We're representing Sister Margret, Mary, Anne, June, and July's Boarding School for Youngsters."
"...You don't say." Yakko replied a bit sullenly, taking another gander at Rem's uniform, this time catching a cross embroidered into the patch symbolizing the school's coat of arms, and trying very much not to noticeably cringe.
"So you're visiting the States? Where are you from, if you don't mind my asking?"
"Oh, nowhere special; just a little place in eastern Europe. Winters are a drag, but the Springs are certainly to 'die' for."
Alice let out a giggle as he bounced his eyebrows up and down. Rem finally had enough.
"Yeah, that's all well and good..." she interjected, grabbing ahold of Alice's wrist and starting to pull her away. "...but we need to get our butts back before we get busted for violating curfew."
"Um, it was nice talking to you!" Alice sputtered as her friend dragged her away.
Before they even reached the venue entrance, Yakko had suddenly appeared in front of them, causing Rem to abruptly halt.
"Before you go...eeeehhhh, how 'bout a photo op?" Yakko quirked, grabbing ahold of Rem, holding her close with one hand and holding up her camera with the other, pointing the lens at them. "Say cheese!"
Rem was nearly shocked to find that their 'acquaintance' was colder than their freezer, and his limbs felt like she was being wrapped up in iron bands. It gave her all the more reason to want to get away from him.
"Look, Warner..." she hissed after finally getting herself free and jabbing him slightly in the chest. "It was awesome knowin' ya, for like all of two seconds."
Yakko merely continued grinning at her.
"Eh, I wouldn't worry; I think I'll be seein' you around town." he quipped with a wink.
"...I highly doubt it."
Yakko watched them leave, still with a wide grin on his face. As soon as they vanished from view however, the expression sank into a very disappointed one. Then he pulled out a mobile phone and dialed a number.
"Greetings, Master." said Brain's voice. "I trust this communication means you have news for me."
"Oh sure, I've got an update for ya." Yakko replied. "Need'ja to hack into Sister Margret, Mary, Anne, June, and July's Boarding School for Youngsters."
"...Very well."
Yakko could tell in the tone of his voice, that Brain was questioning why in the world he wanted him to look into a church-based school of all things. But it must be important if the elder Warner was asking about it.
"Alright, I'm in." said the albino mouse. "Looking for anything in particular?"
"Yup. Look up student, Rem Roth." Yakko directed.
The tapping of keys filled the sound waves as Yakko patiently waited. A few seconds later, there was a long pause.
"...Uh, Master?" Brain finally said, a bit apprehensively. "I believe we might have a problem."
"Yyyyyup. I thought so." Yakko ranted dejectedly."
XXXXXX
"...WHADDYA MEAN SHE'S A MORTAL?!"
Yakko rubbed his ear after his sister screeched out her disbelief when he told her what he had discovered. The others were also shocked to hear this when they returned to the theater.
"How did that happen?!" Wakko exclaimed, scratching his head in confusion.
"Can that happen?" Skippy added, acting as if the whole notion of it was completely unfathomable. "Is that even legal?!"
"Well, that explains why one of my girlfriends was so sure she saw her walk into a churchyard." Rita commented.
"Alright, alright, so despite all the hard evidence pointing in that direction, are we actually sure it's her?" Slappy asked.
"Eeeeeehhhh, I'm almost one hundred percent positive." Yakko said thoughtfully. "She's got the same attitude when you push her buttons. Outside of appearances, of course. But her scent was a dead giveaway."
"There's a possibility, that what we have here is a case of reincarnation." Brain mused in a calculating manner, scratching his chin.
"...What does condensed milk have anything to do with this?" Wakko asked blankly.
"Besides being positively dreadful?" Dot added. "Even if you're not a vampire?"
"We're not talking about a common grocery product." Brain replied irritably. "I'm referring to the concept of a soul being brought back to this world in another form."
"...Naaarrrfffff." Pinky marveled.
"Ergo, it's quite possible that our dear sister might have been destroyed that night almost two hundred years ago." Brain continued.
"...and she came back as a mortal?" Yakko cried, quite perplexed and flabbergasted.
"That's the theory; which now holds water if her scent if precisely the same."
This sent the siblings and everyone else's brains bouncing around like rubber balls. But then again, they never really were into the kind of science and technobabble that Pinky and the Brain were. Yakko certainly wasn't liking the very idea that one of their own had met a rather untimely end back then.
"Okay, I'll bite...why wouldn't she recognize me then?" he said. "I had to have spent a good five minutes tryin' to drum up a mind talk, and she reacted about the same way Lucy would've if she and Desi ever had a reunion."
That one got the two mice stumped. They couldn't find a logical reason as to how their member wouldn't immediately be drawn to him.
"Maybe we oughta consult Scratchy for that one." Dot suggested.
xxxxxx
A few minutes later, the Warners were seated in front of a laptop with Pinky and the Brain standing near the keyboard and everyone else peering over the siblings' shoulders. They attempted to get a video call going with Doctor Scratchansniff back at Castle Warner.
"Is this thing on?" Plotz ranted as the video feed buffered, coming up slightly fuzzy and glitchy.
"I theenk so..." Scratchansniff replied quizzically. Then he noticed the siblings on the screen on their end. "Ah, good eveneeng, keeds. Everytheeng ees goeeng vell, ja?"
"Eeeeeh, we ran into a slight hiccup." Yakko said. "Turns out she's mortal."
Plotz was fit to be tied.
"WHAT?!" he exclaimed. "How in the name of darkness and chaos, did that wound up happening?!"
The Brain thus launched into his reincarnation theory for the two castle keepers. While Scratchansniff rubbed his chin deep in thought, Plotz just stared as if everything the albino mouse had was in Pig Latin.
"Hmm, very eenteresteeng..." Scratchansniff murmured.
"But the problem is that she doesn't remember me." Yakko protested. "She didn't even recognize me when I met her."
"Vell, eet's possible zat she does, but all zat ees buried deep vitheen her subconscious. Eet seems zat ze issue before us ees zat ve must reavaken her memories of us und her previous life. Slowly but surely of course, as thees might come all as a shock to her."
"There's a punchline if I ever heard one." Slappy cracked.
"Zere's also za possibility zat she might be able to recall za circumstances zat led her to thees predicament."
"Hmph, one could hope." Rita commented.
Of course this was a task certainly better said than done, but it wouldn't kill them to try. Perhaps they would also be able to reawaken her vampiric attributes without having to...turn her.
"But if that kid's goin' to a school that's sittin' right next door to a beakin' church, how are we gonna get to her without anyone noticin' and without us coming down with a case of the heebee jeebees?" Squit asked.
The Warners then went deep into thought.
"Weelllll, I've got an idea that might work." Yakko said with a grin. "Say Brain...how 'bout you set us with some enrollment?"
XXXXXX
On the bus back to the dormitory, Alice was silently looking over her notes, and carefully highlighting key points. Rem meanwhile was both relieved and fuming. Relieved because she was finally getting out of that place full of rich snobs, fuming because of her encounter with that goofy looking boy. The weird thing was, that now that she was thinking about it, something about him was vaguely...familiar. Very vague. Alice could tell Rem was thinking about him, just by the look on her face.
"You know, for a rich kid, he seemed very nice." Alice commented. "And funny."
"...spare me." Rem grumbled.
"He seemed to be pretty interested in you, too."
Rem suppressed a growl at her friend's teasing remark, very much not entertaining the idea of someone having a crush on her. A few minutes later, the overcast sky rumbled with thunder and both girls felt the temperature drop.
"I sure hope he doesn't freeze out there." Alice added. "His hand was really cold when I shook it."
That caused Rem's brain to start working again. She also recalled how cold his body was back when he gave her a bear hug. It felt as if he had been spending his spare time in a meat locker. Not only that, but he couldn't have weighed not much more than her, and yet he had the strength of the jaws of life. It just didn't make any lick of logical sense to her at all.
...How could he be thin as a rail, and be as strong as the freaking Hulk?