Quote of the week:
Me: Yeeeeaaaah... people tend to leave that out. I mean, what sort of glorious life is a newbie vampire supposed to have if they're stuck drinking blood from homeless bums? It'd make for quite the embarrassing first few decades.
Jasper Riddle: I'd love to read a story from that perspective. Or at least this line in it:
"Yeah, the first few decades were a pain in the ass. I've never gotten blood from anyone high-class, so I don't know if there's a difference, but I'll tell you this: a bum's blood ain't the greatest."
Gaiaonline is fun. x.x
I is upating... wow. o.o Beat me over the head with a haddock. Now.
Claws dug into pale skin. Blond hair fell to the floor in bloodied, dirty clumps. A tail lashed back and forth angrily in the dark. It was getting colder and colder. Harder and harder to breathe, now...
Am I dying..? A while ago, she'd heard that if you died suddenly and violently in your dream, your body would by so convinced by the dream that you could die in your sleep. It was an urban legend, really, about some kid who had dreamt he was falling, someone suffered a major heart attack from the shock of falling out of his bad and waking up just before his dream-self hit the hard, dream-concrete.
Dream or not, she didn't like suffocating, so she did perhaps one of the most difficult things any teenager could do.
She woke herself up.
Sunlight filtered through the blinds of her shared bedroom, and the cat demon breathed a sigh of relief, but not before noticing the way her own breath clouded before her face. Chrysanthemum wrapped her fleece blanket around herself and trudged to the open window, wondering what had ever passed Aki's mind to leave the window open in the middle of February.
She let her forehead fall against the ice-cold glass with a dull thunk, eyes focusing and zoning out again repeatedly on the hexagonal designs created by the frosted ice crystals. Once only a faint nightmare, earlier in the year, the starkness of the violence in the dream scared her.
"Chrys, get down here before we eat everything!"
She groaned and wrapped her blankets even tighter around her slim frame, glad to hear her brother so early in the morning.
It was a welcome reality check compared to the image of his hands around her neck.
"Come on, Urameshi! You went over this type of crap with Genkai!"
"If there was one useful thing the old hag never taught me, it was how to play Bullshit."
"Bullshit," Lyonell cheerfully proclaimed, flipping over the newly placed threes and ace. The cat demon slid the pile of cards over to Yusuke, who begrudgingly shuffled them into his hand.
Kuwabara, with only a single card left in his possession, nodded over to Lark. "It's on fours, now."
"Right." More cards were tossed down, now the new base of the soon-to-be towering card pile, and Yusuke snorted. "This sucks. Whoever came up with the idea for this game should be shot." Lyonell and Kuwabara merely blinked, then pointed to the only girl player. Under the sprit detective's scrutinizing glare, Lark cringed. "I have, in no way, shape, or form, ownership of the game 'Bullshit'."
"But you're still bullshitting that hand, right?" Yusuke asked, pointing at the five cards on the table.
Perhaps it was for the greater good of the other players, but the spirit detective chose to ignore the breathing problem Kuwabara had come down with. Lyonell only shook his head in shame, and flipped the cards over.
All fours.
"What the crap! Come on, don't tell me you expect me to believe that's right!" As he slammed his fist against the table, Lark coyly grinned. With a poised, graceful hand, she slid the five cards over to Yusuke. "We're playing with a double deck, remember?"
"Who's dumb-ass idea was that? Tell me!"
Kuwabara, Lyonell, and Lark only shared glances, before two fingers were pointed at the carrot-top. With an expression akin to the shock one experiences when their puppy decides to play in the middle of an intersection, Kuwabara stood up from the table, and out of reach of Yusuke. "Don't blame me. You said it would be a good handicap, to counter my precognition."
Lyonell cleared his throat. "Well, it was a good idea at the time..."
"But that was before we found out Yusuke really, really sucks at this game," Lark finished.
Outnumbered (and with the end-of-lunch bell about to ring in mere minutes), Yusuke slumped down on the table. "I give up, then." In fact, he was tired. Very much so; tired enough to ignore Lark's "My, aren't you a go-get-'em detective?" comment. Even as students began to wander towards the building and, thus, away from the picnic table they were seated on, he didn't bother to pay attention. It was only when, as Lyonell was busy reshuffling the cards into one big deck, the cat demon grabbed Yusuke's scattered (and sizeable) hand of cards a bit too quickly and accidentally gave the teen a small paper cut, that made him flinch and open his eyes in surprise that he bothered to move.
And, in that second he opened his eyes, Yusuke thought he saw - if only for a moment - Justin climbing over the concrete wall on the opposite end of the courtyard, most likely on his way towards the pond. Except, that wouldn't have been very likely, given the circumstances.
Ever since the bomb-threat last week, Justin had been temporarily moved to a solitary dorm closer located in the main office building. He had been exempt from classes, and not a single student had seen him since.
Not that they really cared; everyone was plenty happy to gossip about the event without the horrible glare or ferocious temper of the human boy. New details kept on being "discovered", people formed their own theories as to the attacker's intentions, and fingers had already begun to point, all without aid of the actual victims.
But one thing was the same: whenever Lyonell rolled up his sleeves to work in the greenhouse, revealing the peachy-tan bandages underneath, no one dared mention the subject.
So, after the first possible sighting of Justin in a week, Yusuke could only come up with one phrase to communicate what he had seen to his friends...
"What the crap was that?"
Hearing that particular phrase from Yusuke wasn't exactly a once-in-a-lifetime-moment, so the other three students continued to pack up their things, oblivious to the teen's comment.
Oblivious, that is, until the dozen over-sized bats that Ryo kept as pets decided to tear through the trees; they dropped out of sight, over the concrete wall, hot in pursuit of Justin - if it even really had been him.
The bell rang out, and students began to mosey on inside. All across the lawn, textbooks were shut, bags were flung onto shoulders, clusters of people attempted to fit through the doors that were only big enough for a single file line. From their concrete patch, a group of hacky-sack players went around once more, before the bean-filled toy was spiked into the air and the smallest of the group - a demon boy not much older than twelve - chased after it. Slightly familiar faces popped up in the crowd, only to be swallowed up again.
In the middle of trying to merge into the group, Yusuke shot a look at Kuwabara. As if on cue, the two of them disappeared from the mass of students, losing Lark and Lyonell in the process, and ducked around the building corner.
"You feel it, too?" Kuwabara finally asked, once certain no one had followed. Yusuke, hands on his knees as he leaned against the school building, only shrugged. "As if that wasn't weird. A bunch of bats in the daytime," he paused and snorted. "Ryo must be going senile - oof!"
He raised a hand, attempting to avoid the needled branches that were so determined on jabbing his eyes out; Kuwabara shoved down on his shoulder, forcing Yusuke to kneel. As the taller boy bent down next to Yusuke, his hand resting heavily on the smaller teen's shoulder, they heard light footsteps go past their shrubbery. Yusuke's eyes widened at the sight of Ryo just wandering school grounds during the middle of a class period.
Even bundled up in his fuzzy, maroon sweater, the elf looked more than a little upset at his predicament. He cocked his head, as if trying to listen better, then eyed the concrete wall. With a quick look around to make sure no one was watching, he headed towards the staircase leading to the lakeside path...
... And broke out into a run.
In all the time he had been in presence of the elf, Yusuke had never seen Ryo run, and that was enough of a clue to figure out something was seriously wrong. With an unspoken nod between the two of them, the Japanese teens burst out of the bushes and followed Ryo.
Various signed graffiti became a blur as they ran past, harsh concrete finally giving way to barren trees and the dusty brick pathway. Yusuke barely had the chance to wonder just where Ryo and Justin had ran - it wasn't totally impossible for them to have gone off the path - before Kuwabara pointed out the direction of the teacher's energy much like a hunting dog.
"Are you sure/' Yusuke asked, scanning the many walking trails that branched off the main path. The carrot top only gave Yusuke an incredulous look before coughing into his hand and following the difficult-to-miss trail of broken branches and trampled grass. With a glare, Yusuke snorted. "Fine, we'll go your way."
"So... how's that sixth sense coming along?" Yusuke swung his leg over the trunk of an overturned tree, and rolled his brown eyes at Kuwabara's back. The taller teen just kept tromping through the woods, not at all amused.
"Shut up, Urameshi."
"Sit on it," he replied, and was, quite literally, forced to eat his own words. As a single mass of dark-brown fur and fragile wings, the bats that had garnered his attention in the first place came swooping down out of the trees, gliding low to the ground and sharply pulling up just in front of Yusuke -- surprising the spirit detective enough to step back, and trip over the horizontal tree behind him.
Any snarky comments the two might have made were suddenly wiped from their minds, for a very familiar voice had managed to be heard above the furious flapping of wings.
"Would you take some responsibility, for once?"
"Responsibility for what! I didn't do anything!" That was Justin, it had to be. After months of sharing classes, Yusuke had gotten quite used to his tone of voice whenever Justin got agitated.
Although neither one of the two boys would ever claim to be proud of eavesdropping, they both hid in the shrubbery and listened to the argument intently.
'Even though I didn't get blown up or anything, like Lyonell, I'm just as much a victim here!"
"A victim that, although technically innocent, runs off or becomes defensive whenever they are questioned?"
"S-shut up! The other two got sent back to classes, but you dragged me out of my own dorm. Then, you interrogate me! I've had enough with your bullcrap!"
Kuwabara felt a chill run up his spine at the sudden spike of reiki, a slight tremor in the overwhelming waves of spiritual energy that came from the student body and staff; it was so slight, there was no way anyone could have noticed where it came from -- if they weren't only ten feet away from it's source.
Ryo looked unruffled by Justin's outbursts: professional, unmoved, but not uncaring. As a teacher, he had been through this sort of thing multiple times with far more frightening students. And, as only a centuries-old adult could, he had a wealth of common sense stored up for such an event.
'First, calm down," he started, but to no avail; Justin was still as tense and angry as before. Mentally, Ryo griped at the situation, but aloud said, "Think this through rationally. What seems more suspicious? Option A: a mature witness that voluntarily gives information, or, option B, a temperamental teenager that runs off whenever the subject is brought up?"
"Raaargh!" The fist came flying out of nowhere, intent on colliding with the teacher's ribs. Instead, Justin found himself caught in a rather uncomfortable headlock, kudos to Kuwabara; in front of him, shoulder braced to shove him to the ground, was a ready and waiting Yusuke.
Restrained by his own friends, Justin was even more speechless when Ryo's cell phone went off. The elf answered it, to the astonished looks from his students, and indifferently replied to the receiver. "Hello?"
None of the boys could make out what was coming from the phone, but every now and again Ryo would nod and shift his glance in their direction. Finally pocketing the phone again, the elf turned his back to them.
"You're free to go, Justin. That call was from the offices -- someone stole some student files during the attack. The human merely blinked at his speedy release. "Say what?" Even while holding Justin's hands behind the boy's back, and with the other arm wrapped firmly around the boy's neck, Kuwabara felt like muttering out a "whuh?" as well; Yusuke appeared to be as equally confused, as well.
"Don't act foolish. As far as we know from watching you, you have no motive to steal papers, and were too busy being treated for a possible concussion at the time. You're off the hook."
Leaving the three boys with the slow realization that, not only was Justin being let off for nearly attacking a teacher, but the boy's solitary conditions were over, Ryo weaved his way though the undergrowth, disappearing into the trail.
Any idiot student from a different school would have been cheering from now, but all three of them knew the type of info stored in school files. If the information had gotten into the wrong hands... well, how much more trouble could it cause?
As they would soon learn, a lot.
Short, I know... but I have two pages of 26 typed out already. >.> By the way, is anyone entering the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) contest?
It's tempting, for me, but I doubt you folks would like to have this fic be slowed down any more than it already is. x.x
On the bright side, next chapter!
Valentine's Day rolls around!
Yusuke is jinxed! (uh, oops?)
February 14th... Koryu's bithday? Say what?
Have fun at school! wait, fun..? I dunno. I died. x.x