Author:Lady Phoenix
Disclaimer:Bastard!! is copyright of Kazushi Hagiwara, as are Kall Su and Dark Schneider.
Disclaimers & warnings: See author's forward.
Authors note: Thanks to those who encouraged me after chapter one and to those who read chapter one, even if they didn't comment.
Chapter Two: Meet the Cast
I wake up on Saturday with a feeling of dread. Today is the day we are meeting for that damned English project. I had somehow managed to forget about today during the last two days.
The house was already empty when I awoke; everyone else having already left to watch whatever sport or activity is practiced by whichever sister on Saturday mornings. I go through my morning routine; shower, shave, brush my teeth, dress… By the time I'm done it's already 11:30 am.
I make my way down to the kitchen in search of sustenance in my usual weekend attire; black jeans and a large t-shirt consisting of the same color. I eat my breakfast out on the front porch while listening to some music and watching the neighborhood kids play street hockey. All I have to do now is wait for the others to arrive to finally seal my dreaded fate.
Gara arrives first, and once he finds out no one else has arrived yet, he promptly joins the kids in playing hockey. It seems as if he's pretty good with children, but I guess that's to be expected seeing as how he himself is nothing but a big kid at heart. His loud laughter fills the street, a laughter that's not all that unpleasant to listen to.
Ashes is dropped off by her parents next. Without even acknowledging me, she sits down on the porch, pulls out a magazine and starts to read. Cosmo I think. Whoever said that going unacknowledged is the greatest insult of all was wrong; it's a blessing. If she started with her snide comments now I don't know how I'd react.
Yohko walks up a few minutes later; she must have taken the bus. At the time a silver Trail Blazer pulls up in front of my house, and out steps the man of my dreams. Now that's something I didn't know; that Lucié could drive.
Gara walks up to our little group just as I'm trying to start a conversation to kill the suffocating silence. "Nice car," I say as I rise to open the door to my house.
"Thanks, it's my parent's though," he replied with a shrug. What a beautiful voice he has. Alright, so it's not a soft voice, or a velvety one, or one that could put you to sleep just by listening to it, in fact his voice is pretty arrogant, but it's his voice and therefore it's a beautiful voice to me. I could listen to it forever. "Nice place, Kall." We all enter the entrée as he says that.
"Thanks, it's my parent's though," I answer; throwing his own words back at him without even realizing it. "And it's Kall Su." I add almost as an after thought."So where are we going to work?" asks Gara seeing as how we are just standing in the entrance, not going anywhere.
"It doesn't really matter," I start, "the house is empty, so there's no risk of anyone bothering us. We can work wherever.""How about your room?" asks Yohko. This earns her a few lewd comments from Lucié, but I don't really hear them because I'm already headed towards the kitchen.
"Anyone want something to drink?" I throw over my shoulder. After supplying the others with drinks, we head up to the third and final floor of the house, which consists of my room.
"Wow, cool room Kall," Lucié says upon entering my room.
I try not to get all giddy due to the compliment. Is it even a compliment? If it is, it's for my room, not me, so why am I so happy that he likes my room? "It suits it's purpose," I manage to say, trying to look indifferent. I take a quick look around my room, as if seeing it for the first time. The stairs we walked up serve as a divider of my room: on one side there's my bedroom and the on the other my living room.My living room is composed of a television in one corner, with two futons closing that area off in the shape of a diamond. There's a coffee table in the center of that part of the room. In the other corner is a large black piano.
The middle of my room is taken up by the stairs surrounded by a light oak railing on one side. On the other side has waist high bookcases lining the wall filled with books, CDs and movies. On top of the bookcases are my stereo, a fish tank and some plants.
On the other side of the stairs is where I sleep. The bookcases in front of the stairs connect to a bookcase of roughly six feet high. That bookcase is in turn connected to my desk where resides my computer, followed by yet another connecting bookcase. On the opposite side of the wall is my very large, but very simple bed flanked by two nightstands. On the connecting wall were mirrored sliding doors linking to my bathroom and my closet.
The walls, which are of a light blue color, are rather barren. Anything textile wise is of a light blue color, and the furniture is made of light oak.
"Oh! How cute!" squeals Yohko, making me cringe in disgust as well as pain, as she practically glomps my fish tank. She thinks my fish are cute? How the hell can fish be cute? "Do the have names?"
Names? Who the fuck names their fish? All right, if you have one or two and can tell them apart, I guess it's not that weird to name your fish, but if you have ten and they look exactly alike, who the fuck names them? "Um…Yes?" Wow, smart answer Kall Su. Wait, why is she looking at me? Does she expect me to name them? "Uh, that's fish number one, and number two, and number three, and number four, and number five and number six, and number seven, and number eight, and number nine…" Where the hell is number ten? Did one of my fish decide to go all evil and eat one of the other fish?
"Didn't you name that one twice?" Asks Ashes, pointing towards one of the fish. Great, the cheerleader is making me look stupid.
"Can we get started?" Lucié calls from where he's seated on one of the futons. My savior! My knight in shining armor saving me from the evil cheerleading bitch! The rest of us join him on the futons and prepare to work.
"So, how do we go about this?" Gara asks when he realizes that we're just sitting there and staring at each other.
"I've been thinking about it," I start, "the best idea is probably to choose a setting, then define our characters, and sorta go along from there." Receiving no contestations, I continue. "So what kind of world do you want this to take place in?"
Yohko is the first one to break the pensive silence that had settled over us. "A medieval setting! With knights, and castles, and dragons, and little villages too!" She probably wants to be a princess too.
This seemed to give the others courage to speak their opinions, for Gara quickly follows up with his own idea. "It should take place in Asia, with ninjas and samurais!"
Ashes speaks up next. "A futuristic world with advanced technology."
We all turn towards Lucié, awaiting his answer. After a short pause, he responds, looking as if he cannot see us, lost in his own thoughts. "A world with magic and power. A world in turmoil plunged into chaos. A world full of conquests and people waiting for a savior, for they have nothing left but hope."
We sit in stunned silence for a few minutes before I can muster up the courage to speak again. It's not as if I didn't believe he could say deep things, in fact, what he just said wasn't all that deep. It's just that it seems to go against everything he is. Lucié is always happy, and boisterous, a very energetic and loud person, it's as if he had suddenly become someone else. A darker, more serious and pensive person. When I do finally speak, my voice is hesitant, "we could try to combine all that… Say, it's in the distant future, a future that -"
"What about the medieval setting?" Yohko cuts in.
"Can I finish what I was saying?" I ask annoyed. "Thank you. As I was saying, it can be in the future, but after some cataclysmic, even apocalyptic event. This event plunges the human race into darkness, creating almost a second medieval period-" I look at Yohko. "It also allows the birth of new things such as magic, dragons and other races."
"What about the ninja and the samurai?" Gara asks, looking almost nervous. Can it be that the jock can sometimes feel fear? Of course he can, he is human after all, the thing is that he doesn't need to feel fear, everyone at school admires him, so why does he feel fear?
"There can be a select group of ninja that survived or soething. We can figure out the details later." Lucié interrupts before I can answer. I guess that means he likes the idea, but what if he doesn't? "I say we got with the idea, after all, everyone's happy with it, right? But what about you Kall? What did you want the setting to be?"
I'm so happy! I must fight off the urge to do a little happy dance. If I were to die right now, I would die one very happy guy; not only does he like my idea, he actually cares what I think! But what if he doesn't really care? What if he's asking so that he can mock me after? No, Lucié wouldn't do that, would he?
I shrug. "I'm easy, don't really care. I do however suggest that we name someone who will control the story. Kind of like a game master."
"How do you know so much about this?" Ashes asks me. Is that suspicion in her voice? What the hell does she have to be suspicious about?
"I guess it's cause I used to play a lot of Dungeons and Dragons." I reply, hoping beyond hope that they won't tease me.
"You should probably be in charge then, seeing as how you have the most experience in this type of thing." Wow, Yohko is suggesting that I be in charge? I thought she would suggest that Lucié be in charge, she seems to like him a bit more than she should. Hey, she didn't joke about it, thank you God, they didn't joke about it!
"Isn't Dungeons and Dragons for nerds?" The stupid grin that had plastered itself on my face abruptly falls. Damn you Gara! Damn you God!
Before I can Reply, Lucié speaks. "so do you accept the job, Kall?"
"Kall Su." I think about it for a few seconds before answering. "I guess I can. It'll mean more work, and my main character won't be able to do much, but it might be fun…" I trail off, already hatching plans in my head.
"Okay," Ashes starts, "so what do we do now?"
"Let's see…" I start off, "the first chapter is due in two weeks?" I ask.
"No, only the outline." Yohko corrects me. I hate people who correct me.
"Okay," I try again, "We can start by doing our character profiles. We can get the basics done today. If possible, it would be best if I could get a brief history of each of your characters, nothing fancy though. Do you think you can give me those by Monday?"
"I'm sure that if we work together, we can have it done by Monday!" Eew… Yohko is full of optimism. Optimism is evil.
"That's just it," I try to explain, "it can't be done together, or else you'll know things you shouldn't know." Mwahahahaha, foiled your plan, didn't I?
"What do you mean?" Gara asks.
"Well, let's say someone was, I don't know, exiled from their village at a young age? They were ashamed of it and never told anyone, but years later they return with someone else. That someone else can't understand why the character is feeling nostalgic, or angsty, or angry or whatever else they might feel, because they were never told about the exile. I guess it's really to avoid complications and to make the story move at a natural pace. I really hate it when I can't express myself clearly; I hope they understand what I was trying to get at.
"I guess that makes sense." Gara says, not looking too sure whether he understands or not.
"So I guess if we have any problems, we should see you about them, huh?" Lucié asks, diverting my attention from Gara. Actually, I'm surprised I haven't been more distracted,; I mean Lucié, man of my dreams, is so close! And in my room!
"That would probably be best, yes." I manage to reply without squeaking, go me!
"What exactly do you want to know about our characters?" Ashes is giving me the evil eye, does she suspect me? Does she know about my infatuation with Lucié?
"The looks, the basics, meaning name, age, gender, race and anything else you want to supply me with, as well as a brief history up until the beginning of the story. I'll probably modify the history so that it works with the story, but I'll try to avoid that." Take that you evil bitch!
"And you want that by Monday?" The bitch asks."Like I said, by Monday if possible. Like that, I can set up the story during the week and then we can start next Saturday."
"Sounds like a plan." I feel like doing a little victory dance when Lucié says that, he approves! "Why don't' we start now?"
The next couple of hours are spent with each of us working on our own, but I ended up answering a lot of questions. At the end of the day, after Lucié has driven everyone home, this is what I know about the characters: Gara is going to be some sort of master ninja, Yohko wants to be a young girl bringing love and justice to the world in the name of God, Ashes wants to be an elf of some sort with a dark past, and Lucié wants to be an all powerful wizard bent on conquering the world. I don't really know what I want to be yet; I'll decide after figuring out the plot.
As I fall asleep, one thought flitters through my mind: What have I gotten myself into?
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