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Chapter 19: Master William
Ann sat on the rust old couch quietly, reading something about hair gel when she heard something loud coming down the stairs. She glanced up at Joey, snickering loudly; she blinked and opened her mouth.
"What have you done know?" Joey looked at her quickly, his eyes almost watering. He pointed to the stairs slowly. Ann looked over to the stairs and dropped the magazine loudly on the ground in total shock, surprise, but most of all humor. There on the last wooden step stood the fluffiest pinkest cartoon rabbit about as tall as a regular sized man. Its big angry blue eyes looked at Joey totally annoyed and angry.
"Shut up dog." Seto's voice rang out. Ann's eyes widened.
"Seto? What the heck did you do?!" His eyes suddenly dulled very annoyed.
"I walked in on Bill's…seminar…And he turned me into THIS for a day…" Joey finally lost it and fell to the ground laughing uncontrollability. Kaiba's eyes filled with rage as he almost pounced on Joey ready to kill him when someone unexpected entered the room.
"FUNNY BUNNY!" Ann's eyes shot to the door in the far left of the small cabin room onto Pegasus, his eyes with big hearts in them. Seto's eyes widened.
"NNNOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Seto started running for his life as Pegasus started chasing him in circles around the room gasping the same words every few minutes.
"Must…hug…funny bunny!" Seto kept running around the room quickly yelling.
"GET AWAY FROM ME!" Pegasus finally tried to lunge at him, but his current problem saved him. He jumped nimbly over his snow-white head and landed about five feet behind him, or where Pegasus landed when he couldn't slow down in tine and crashed straight into a wall. This gave the extremely ruffled animal once known as the CEO of Kaiba Corp a few good moments of escape, or would have if Joey hadn't roped his arms around his waist and weighted him down, and killed any sense of escape he had.
"GET OFF ME WHEELER!!!" He cried out desperately, immediately clawing at his arms with those huge furry mitts, his navy orbs pouncing every few seconds to the stirring pink suit in the corner. Using one of his new huge furry feet he kicked the constricting teen blonde straight in the stomach, and broke his hold instantly, giving Kaiba one pure moment of hope. Then Pegasus's arms went over his eyes and pressed into his chest as they tightened against him. Kaiba shouted in agony and thrashed in Pegasus's huggy bind with desperation. Ann was left, jaw flapping open, on the side lines of this whole battle, when Calendae suddenly seemed to appear right next to her. She took one look at Ann, then to the huge floppy eared animal and Kaiba's shrieking voice, then back to Ann again in a sort of horrific awe.
"So this is what you dream about?" Ann's attention was averted from the scene in front of her to the wise double with deep bewilderment set in her brown orbs. Calendae's
eyebrows lifted as her face turned to blankness and just looked at her a moment, as if to make sure, before she spike against.
"Yes, this is a dream; Ann. Mokuba has been trying to wake you for the past five minutes. It seems urgent…whatever it is…so you must wake up." Ann Blink out of existence as a voice struck Ann's ears painfully.
"WAKE THE HELL UP!"
Ann's eyes flew open and immediately grabbed the pair of arms shaking her with such force that they trembled a moment, and quickly attempted to recoil from her grip, but were failing. A fluttering bang awoke her ears to their full working nature, unlike her eyes. Blinking a few moments, her eyes finally adjusted after seconds of her brains pleads to the light and saw a pale face with a set of blue frightened orbs.
"Kaiba…?"
"No, NO! It's me…Mokuba!" She blinked another sliced moment away and took the last bits of sleep away from her eyes and saw the midnight locks of messy hair and looked him directly in the eyes. Her grip gave and he pulled himself free, no longer shaking at all, but looking at her with a rare glint in his eyes. Where had she seen that before?
"What's wrong?"
"My brother is missing." Ann groaned, noting a throbbing in her back and the book tumbled on the floor at Mokuba's shoes. She had slept in the chair all night with the novel she had been reading, now in the floor due to the vague small struggle.
"Hm…missing?"
"YES!" Mokuba's shout made her jump from groggy to fully awake. She stood up quickly, not letting her legs buckle for too long, as she walked to the door.
"…Why are you telling me this?" Ann asked. Mokuba, following as usual, stopped, causing in affect to the stop and listen.
"Because, Yugi and Tea said you would help." Ann couldn't argue with this. She just looked into his frowning eyes and knew what it felt like to find a part of one's family gone without a trance. Mokuba must have felt that wakened dark fear a hundred times stronger than Ann could because Seto Kaiba was the lost of his family, all he had left.
Ann could not deny him her help knowing that.
"Where are the others?" She asked as she turned away and started again to the door. It wasn't hard to sense that Mokuba was now smiling behind her, of what he could smile about anyway.
"Mai, Marie, and Serenity are out shopping and beyond reach, Tristan and Joey are missing too, Bill is at school, Ammon is with him, Brian and Kyle are with Yugi and Tea. They are going to met me at Kaiba Corp in two hours…of course only if someone went with me.: Ann guessed immediately what happened. They thought him too young to venture out and look for his brother, so they told him to stay here with a promise that if he found someone of an older age that could not be disturbed to go with him to Kaiba Corp. If not, then they would do it alone. Being the sibling of the lost, Mokuba just couldn't let that happen; he needed to look for his brother. Ann just happened to be the answer to his riddle.
She smirked at him, eyes glinting with a deep understanding, but laughing all the same.
"Alright, but first we need to get Bill and Ammon with us…and then we can look for your brother…just one question."
"Yes?"
"How are we getting there?" She glanced behind her quick enough to see a smirk, probably inherited from his brother, spread on his face from ear to ear. It was pretty scary, him looking like an evil lawn gnome for that few moments; made Ann wonder if Mokuba was really more than just the tag-a-long little brother she had viewed him as.
"I have my resources…" This could be every educational, Ann thought to herself grimly, but didn't look back.
After changing into some different clothes with the ten minutes Mokuba allowed her, she walked out the front door which locked on its own as soon as the knob ticked shut, startling her a bit but not as much as the limo sitting in Bill's make shift driveway.
The tinted windows in the back gleamed in the sun light, until one rolled down swiftly and Mokuba's familiar mess of hair was visible.
"Hurry up!" His voice was more polite than demanding, why in fact; Ann took no offence in his urgency. She hastily trudged through the icy mounds of snow in the ratty old black sneakers with no notice of the cold, opened the door with a hesitant jerk, and slide swiftly into the seat and pulled the door shut with a snap of her arm. The vehicle without delay jolted forward and slid easily in the frost and started its tricky journey down the side of the mountain. But she didn't notice this very much. Ann was impressed by the inside of the car.
She had never been in a limo before, and she was painfully aware that her mouth was open. It was a rectangular chamber with leather seats made into the sides of it, including the three doors, stopping in a few places. Small places contained cup holders, probably for the drinks in the mini compartment (Ann was 95% sure they weren't kiddy drinks of any sort…most likely the kind that would get one 'piss drunk' after a few gulps.), the TV in the left corner, and the computer screens to the right of her in full blast of light, making her eyes squint. The interior was all carpeted with velvet, excluding the seats, including the floor. Mokuba, all the while in her shocked expression, was beaming at her with headphones stuck to each of his ears.
"Do you like it?" Ann just stared at him.
"…I'll take that as a yes."
"W-where the HELL did you get this from?!" Ann choked out, touching the side of the car wonderingly, trying to make sure this was no dream.
"It's Seto's. He never uses it because he thinks it's too 'classy'…I called a driver to take us, hopefully he wouldn't be too mad."
"Hopefully…how close are we to the school?"
"About ten minutes away, why?" Ann shifted uncomfortably. Yes, it was partly the car, but it was mostly about Ammon storming out of the room, and the nightmare of being taught by him was scary. Let's face it, she didn't like Ammon, and he equally didn't like her. End of story. Bill won't understand even if she could tell him. Scratch could, try _would_. She never would. I would be one of those things one takes to the grave; something to add to that huge box of things deep in her mind.
"I haven't thought of an excuse to get him out yet, for the 'officials'." She lied to him. He took it as the truth so fast she felt guilty seconds after her lie.
"Oh, well, let's think of something."
"Like what?" Mokuba scratched his head, ruffling his hair a bit (not that it mattered), in deep thought for a few moments.
"His grandmother is ill?" Ann shook her head.
"That sounds really corny… maybe the police need to take him in." Mokuba raised his eyebrows.
"From two adolescences? You've got to be kidding me…how about unavoidable business?"
"From us?" Mokuba thought a few moments again and finally snapped his fingers with an idea.
"How about the famous Seto Kaiba sent his brother instead of his own messengers, the business being so secret he could only trust his brother, this business being so important, no vital, that Bill be taken out at once." Ann paused a moment, checking the explanation out for leaks, and finally gave him a huge smirk in response.
"It's clever, but you can't tell him straight out. Tell him, or her, that it's a secret and your brother has something to do with it. Let them needle you with a few questions and finally pretend to give in and tell them that he is so important to this 'business' that if Bill doesn't come it will have grim consequences."
/Clever of you. / Calendae's sudden remark set Ann's heart beat up a few notches and visible to her face because Mokuba's face dropped.
"Are you alright?" Ann ignored him a moment.
"DON'T DO THAT!" She growled. Mokuba flinched at her growl and looked quickly sad. A tickly feeling wriggled in the back of her mind from Calendae to that out burst.
/You wouldn't expect me to be left out on this sudden turn of advents would you? /
"Yes, I would- sorry Mokuba. Calendae just beeped in. - now, why don't you warn me that you're coming before I leave the house?"
/Because, what fun would it be if I didn't get to do such things? / Ann gritted her teeth, fiercely annoyed. Calendae laughed boomingly in her ear as response.
/Loosen up a bit, it's only a game. /
"An irritating one."
/Oh…don't get sassy with me. / She replied teasingly.
"Sassy? You sound like my grandmother!" She laughed at Calendae's sudden annoyed response and so the game went between them, Mokuba looking confused because he was only getting one side of the conversation, until they stopped at the front of the building. Ann, after finding the door handle, opened the exit and let Mokuba out (only because they decided if someone should see them get out it would look like she was only a servant.) He placed the sternest expression on his face and tried to walk as innocently into the building. Ann fought back some laughter and tried to walk as professionally as she could. She opened the door for him and walked calmly down the blue locker filled hall, to the office to the left (where she again opened the door) and walked inside.
Mokuba made immediate eye-contact with the small women behind the desk, probably a secretary by her blood-red nail polished nails and deep rimed glasses, and walked up to the desk.
"Excuse me Miss," he said in a new cutie tone of voice, "You wouldn't happen to know where Master William is?" Ann's eyebrows scrunched in confusion. Master William? What the hell? The women looked at him with the same look, but not for the same reason.
"And on what account would you need to see him during classes, Mr…?"
"Mokuba Kaiba, and my brother needs to see him for some unavoidable business." The lady's eyebrows went up higher on her forehead. Ann fought the urge to shift, her nervous energy starting to course through her.
"What, Mr. Kaiba, kind of business would he been needed for?" Ah. She has taken the bait.
"That's confidential, it's imperative that he leaves today."
"You'd have to talk to the principal…"
"Alright." He turned to Ann unexpectedly.
"Would you find the principal and Master William now please?" He asked in a sweet voice. Ann swallowed her surprise and dully nodded, then left the office at a hasty pace. After a good ten feet down the hall she turned into a corridor she hoped was the right way and ran into a brightly lit wall of crowded people, not unexpectedly from the amount of noise they had made before. The blue shirts and pants the boys wore looked nice, but the pink shirts and navy skirts made Ann quickly shudder, thankful that she did not attend. Through the vivid beams of sunlight she could see some laughing expressions, some totally blank, and some angry.
Everyone was carrying an array of different books in their arms, the girls holding them to their chests and most boys letting them flap at their hips, trying to look cool. She got a few confused looks from them, making her increasingly nervous because they looked to be at least a year older than her. She hoped the look was for her cloths, which her nothing like the female uniforms; a jet black sweater with blue jeans and her raggy sneakers.
Looking at them cautiously, she snaked a way through the crowd (away from them) and started to look for Bill among this mess of teenagers, all much older than her. Only a few looks strayed to her, and she was thankful for that; her old sense of disappearing in the crowd seemed to be working for her, as usual. As long as she never made direct eye contact with anyone, she'd be safe. That was a growing problem though; having to look all about was getting more and more tense work.
Finally after about ten minutes of a low class hell in Ann's text book of school experiences, a bell rang and the numbers of the students thinned out quickly. Leaving the hallway in an every opposite way she had found it; deserted. She sighed with relief and suddenly struck a grin, for down the hall was Bill stuffing a load of books in a narrow locker without much success. She ran up to him as fast as possible.
"BILL!" His head swung up in a flinch of surprise, and his eyes quickly strayed to her, and a look of shock soon after.
"What are you doing here?! He whispered at her furiously. Ann straightened up with a look of complete haughtiness.
"Mokuba Kaiba says he is in need of you for some very important work, and-"
"Master William?!" Ann stopped at the professional voice coming from around the corner baffled, and watched the color soon drain from Bill's face as he turned to her suddenly, eyes wide with fear.
"Quick! Get in my locker!"
"What-"
"No time!" Bill hastily shoved Ann into the narrow space and slammed the blue door, leaving Ann in a very narrow and dark place, spare three narrow beams of light coming in. That and the most horrible smell she had ever had to smell in her life.
"There you are!" The voice from before inquired with a delighted tone, the clicking footsteps stopped.
"Hello, nice to see you on such a wonderful morning." Bill's voice came in. Ann fidgeted in the locker until she could see out one of the slits. A portly man wearing a suit and shiny black shoes laughed with a sort of below as Bill sheepishly grinned at him. Ann knew this had to be the principal that was her intuition said. Unfortunately it also said that smell was body odor.
"Master William," Bill slightly shifted his feet to hide the flinch and Ann swallowed a chuckle. "I haven't seen you all week! If I hadn't known better I'd say you were trying to avoid me!" Bill shifted a bit more.
"Er…What ever gave you that idea?" The principal laughed and nudged him in the shoulder, harder than it looked, because Bill started to rub his arm as he kept talking.
"It is wonderful that you decided to attend my school instead of those private institutions, I'm still honored by your decision, that and-" He was interrupted by the call of another adult male voice that sounded very close to Mr. Sawyer's back home, making Ann jump and clatter a bit. The principal didn't notice the noise but turned to the tall teacher thumbing a large pole down the hall with a laugh.
"Mr. Grant! What a surprise! Hopefully you aren't angry with me for detaining one of your pupils…"
"No, no of course not!" Mr. Grant replied with a grin. "It's just that he left his gym shirt in his stall and I thought-" Some kid came running around the corner so fast that Mr. Grant, out of some bizarre reflex or just because he wanted to, turned the pole horizontal and struck the kid in mid-run, flipping him over and onto the ground with a bang, making them all wince. For a moment no one spoke, and then finally the principal cleared his throat.
"Um, Mr. Grant, I don't think the student body will be much of a body if you keep doing that." The teacher looked at his stick, and then to the kid on the floor, and then back to the old chubby man sheepishly.
"Oh, right, um. Here." He dumped a shirt into Bill's hands and quickly sent off to help the poor kid up and off to what she suspected to be the nurse's office. Oh dear. What she was smelling were actually the rest of Bill's gym outfit. How horrific.
"I hope he isn't hall monitor." He whispered to Bill with a wink and started to laugh again. Ann squirmed in the confined space anxiously, accidentally kicking the metal a bit too loud.
"What was that?" Bill immediately elbowed the locker loudly and leaned on it as casually as he could.
"What?"
"Didn't you hear it?" Bill faked a baffled look.
"Hear what?"
"That sound…" Bill deepened his look.
"I think you're hearing things…wait a minute, I think that was the speaker." Bill replied.
"Speaker? That's wasn't the speaker-" Suddenly a blipping noise erupted the conversation.
"Will the principal please report to the office with William? That will be all." It bleeped out again loudly. Saved by the bell.
"Oh! What now? Come on William…"
"I will in a minute, go on with out me, I meet you there."
"Well don't dilly-dally…"
"I won't." Some footsteps clicked and clanked down the hall until it was so quiet she couldn't hear them anymore. Then the locker door she was leaning on flew open and Ann poured out of it and onto the floor with a pair of socks on her face. She batted them away quickly.
"Don't you ever wash your gym clothes?! JEEZ!" Bill gave her a sour look.
"Come on, I know this office trip has something to do with you…"
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