Phoenixfire: Bill Gates has just jumped to the top of my yami's 'kill list'.
YamiPhoenixfire: Damn frickin updates that restart the damn frickin computer while we're not here, wiping out two pages of hard work…
Phoenixfire: Oh come on. Most of that was our argument about who was going to write this chapter. And it's MY turn. You wrote the last one.
YamiPhoenixfire: I should've left you to rot in that plothole. Or, I would have, but then you wouldn't let me write the dream sequences, would you?
Phoenixfire: (glares) What do YOU think? Speaking of plotholes, where did that thing come from anyway? I'm usually very careful about leaving those things hanging around…
YamiPhoenixfire: Um… (whistles innocently)
Phoenixfire: …and you put it there for me to fall into, didn't you! ARRG! That's it! Back into the spare closet with you!
YamiPhoenixfire: And exactly HOW do you plan on writing this story without my help?
Phoenixfire: ………………………………………………
YamiPhoenixfire: (evil smile) Exactly.
Phoenixfire: Whatever. Just do the disclaimer.
YamiPhoenixfire: Fine, fine. We don't own Baten Kaitos, Slice, or Mountain Dew. We don't own a beeping alarm clock, either. Ours sounds like a swarm of killer bees. (Glares at Phoenixfire) There, was that good?
Phoenixfire: Very. Especially since you didn't make any –false- claims about Kalas being your love slave. It would be most unfortunate if he had to beat the crap out of you again. It's hard to get your blood out of the carpet.
Chapter 5: Of Skirmishes, Soda, and Schooldays
Astarael registered a faint beeping noise… a noise which was gradually growing louder…
…beep…beep…BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
Oh. Alarm clock. Yeah, it was… Tuesday.
She blearily smacked the nightstand. Multiple times. Then, she remembered that her alarm clock was now on the BOTTOM of the nightstand…
"Aw, hell," she moaned, kicking off her nice, warm sheets to silence the noise that tormented her, so she could get back to…
"Well why don't YOU prepare to die, Kalas!" she had screamed. The tears were running down her face, and her whip cracked inches from his face. She registered brief surprise –Something is wrong with the order of events here– and proceeded to attack…
Only to have her weapon pulled out of her hands. Kalas sneered at her, his white wings casting a brilliant, painful illumination in the shadowy room.
"You cannot destroy me, Astarael, and THAT shall be your undoing," he told her, as he reached forward and pulled off one of her wings…
Astarael shuddered. She was NOT going to forget that dream anytime soon. She blamed it all on Selih. And midmarkingperiod reports.
And Melodia. Because everything was Melodia's fault somehow.
Wait. That didn't really make much sense. I need my Mountain Dew.
With a put-upon groan, Astarael staggered as quietly as she could manage down the stairs. Really, it didn't make any sense for her to be so tired. She'd actually gone to bed at eleven thirty, and gotten SIX hours of sleep. True, she'd had the horrendous Nightmare to End All Nightmares, but STILL… she shouldn't be this…
…drained?
She didn't like that thought. It had implications that she didn't think she could wrap her mind around without her caffeine…
She reached into the green box in the refrigerator, her hand meeting only cardboard walls. Puzzled, she reached further into the box to find… nothing.
Astarael paused. It took a full two minutes for her sleep-fogged mind to come up with the logical explanation.
"AZILINA MARIE SANDERS! YOUR LIFE IS MINE!"
"Out of Mountain Dew at home?" Selih asked. Astarael ignored her best friend, she didn't want to have to deal with the sarcasm, and she was starting to get a caffeine withdrawal headache. She was too busy hitting the large Code Red button. Her soda wasn't coming out. "I do believe that the machine is trying to tell you that it is sold out."
"Yeah, yeah," Astarael replied in a zombie-like monotone. She moved on to one of the three buttons for regular Mountain Dew. Sold out. Button two. Sold out. Button three…
Green letters read 'Vend'. Selih looked disappointed.
"You don't need to be so happy," Astarael said sarcastically as she bent to pick up her bottle of liquid energy. "We both know how I am… without… my…"
Astarael looked at the bottle. The ORANGE bottle.
It wasn't Mountain Dew.
It was Slice.
Selih bit back a grin. After all her years of friendship with the temperamental ex-Guardian Spirit, she knew better than to pick a fight with an uncaffeinated Astarael. Selih thought head was very nice where it was, thank you. She was smart enough to simply double and laugh silently over while Astarael was busy trying to kick the rebellious machine into submission.
First Period. Pre-Calculus. Astarael kept herself occupied by writing down her List of People I Need to Kill. Azil, Melodia, her mother, and all of her teachers came in at the top of the list. She considered putting Kalas on the list, but since she knew she could never bring herself to hurt the blue-haired boy, let alone kill him, she left his name off. Of course, she could probably convince Selih to do it for her…
And then, as a Guardian, I would have to kill Selih. That would be bad…
Second Period. English. Her teacher was so lax that she actually got to sleep in this class, and nearly got caught because she woke from a recurrence of her nightmare from that night and promptly fell out of her desk chair. Even though no one laughed (they were too afraid of her) she could tell that they wanted to.
It wasn't too hard to convince the teacher that she needed to go to the nurse, so she gathered up her belongings and left the classroom.
Hmm… I don't cut class. This is my first time. Where to…
'Gotcha bitch!" snarled a vaguely familiar voice as she instinctively dodged a grabbing pair of hands and whirled, bringing her makeshift backpack (amazing what duct tape can fix…) down like a mace, catching her opponent off-guard and hurling him into a row of lockers.
"Look, whoever you are, I am tired, caffeineless, and in a VERY bad mood. You'd better have a damn good reason for jumping me and cursing me out, because otherwise I am going to enjoy breaking a few more bones."
"You don't remember me?" he asked, sounding even angrier.
"Hmm." Baggy jeans, black t-shirt, gangster-ish metal necklaces, dark brown hair poking out from under a blue bandanna, torn denim vest that was at least three sizes too big, dirty white sneakers, glazed blue eyes, expression that was a mix of angry and stoned… "Wait. You're the stoner jerk who tried to harass me on the bus yesterday. You were actually stupid enough to come back for round two." She sneered at him and tossed her backpack away, cracking her knuckles. "Bring it."
He charged at her like a wild bull, and she leapt nimbly out of the way, delivering a kick to his backside that sent him sprawling. He struggled to his feet and lunged again. This time, her lack of sleep had apparently caught up with her, because she wasn't able to dodge completely. A grazing blow to her skull sent her skidding into the far wall to slam painfully into unyielding cinderblock. (or whatever the heck they make the school walls out of.) The impact almost made her wings flare out defensively, but she reigned them in by sheer force of will.
Luckily for Astarael, the first teacher chose to investigate as she was struggling to her feet, wiping the blood off her forehead.
"Crying works every time. None of the male teachers know how to deal with a crying teenager. It's even better when you bring up… womanly problems. They get SO red…"
"And that guy… I think his name was Mark… got three weeks of detention for harassing me,' Astarael added with a wicked grin, downing a huge gulp of Slice. She was in such a good mood that she didn't even care that she hated orange soda.
Selih joined her in laughter as they split the combined substance of their lunches and gossiped over nothing. Now, if she could just make it through the rest of the day without falling asleep again, everything would be perfect…
Astarael leaned heavily against the nearest tree. She hadn't had an easy time against the mutant red-tailed hawk. Not only had it been larger, faster, and smarter than the crow, it had been using light magic. And she was really lousy with her dark magic spell.
Worse, she had been injured. Every time some of her blood got on a monster, it seemed to get even stronger for some perverse reason, and she refused to believe that simply being injured could create that big of a difference. Yet another thing that makes me different, she thought bitterly, as she always did whenever her blood got on one of the monsters.
With a disgusted sigh, she started using the bandages that she always kept in her purse for emergencies to tie up the gash on her left arm, and trying to stay awake despite the enormous drain on her magical resources that the fight had caused. She had become quite an old hand at bandaging wounds in the last six months. Times like this make me wish that we had Sacred Wines in our dimension. Now… did she have enough magic left to get the blood out of her blouse and off her jeans?
Yes, she decided, looking forlornly at her backpack, thinking dark thoughts about dragging it home and patching up even more of it with duct tape.
Her body was surrounded briefly by a glow as she magically removed all the blood from her clothing.
Now, get up… get backpack… start dragging and think… of a way… to explain… the… tear…
…aw hell… that took… more out of me… than I… expected…
She was back in the Imperial Palace, with Xelha.
"You know, your eyes have really become a lot more yellow since we bonded," Xelha commented.
"Really?" Astarael asked. Being a spirit meant that no mirror would show her a reflection.
"Yes. In fact, they're almost exactly the same shade as mine," the witch commented with a grin. "So, I guess that you'll have something to remember me by when you go back to your own world."
"Yes…" Astarael replied. She would be going back to her world, someday. She knew she should be happy, but… she really didn't want to leave. She didn't want to say good-bye to Xelha… or Mizuti… or Gibari, Lyude, and Savyna, even though they couldn't see or talk to her. And, most of all, she would miss… Kalas.
Kalas. Even though he had used and betrayed her… she should hate him. She knew that if anyone else had done what Kalas had done to her, that she would hate them. But she…
Oh hell, this is going to be hard…
"Xelha. You know that I love Kalas, don't you?" Astarael asked.
Xelha blinked and stared at the translucent girl floating in the air next to her.
"W-what?" the young queen stuttered, looking utterly baffled.
"I do. And I have for some time. Which is why I want… no, I need to tell you this. While it's just the two of us."
"And what is that?" Xelha asked, her voice taking on an edge of suspicion.
"I…" Gods, didn't I promise myself that I wasn't going to form any attachments? What the hell happened to that good idea, hmm? "I want you… and Kalas… to be happy."
"What are you saying, Astarael?"
"I'm saying that I want you two to be together. I… even if I told Kalas how I felt, it would never work out between us. I'm only a Spirit in this world. I have a life to get back to. Eventually, I'm going to have to leave. So I am never going to tell him how I feel. But you… you're my friend, Xelha. I didn't want a secret this big between us."
"Astarael…"
"Furthermore," the Guardian said with a hint of a grin on her tear-stained face, "when I was a little girl I promised myself that I would never let boys get in the way of my friendships. I like to keep my promises."
There. That hadn't been so hard. It hadn't hurt as much as Kalas telling her to go away had, but it sure came close…
"Xelha!" Mizuti exclaimed, skittering down the hall.
"Did you find the way to where Kalas is/" Xelha asked.
"Not yet. But we did find Emperor Geldoblame's room. It be… Different. Odd. Strange. Weird… You and the Spirit should definitely come and take a look."
"Oookay… come on, Astarael!" Xelha replied brightly. The only hint of their serious conversation that showed was the vaguely relieved quality of Xelha's smile.
"Gah!" Astarael gasped, her eyes flying open.
The sky was tinged red. The sun was setting. She had been lying in the forest about a mile from her house for three hours. Silently, Astarael cursed the luck that always seemed to make monsters appear at the worst possible times.
My mom is going to kill me… Astarael thought.
A/n: Sorry for the lateness of this chapter. And, for those of you who found the room… Geldoblame's bedroom definitely fits his appearance. It's bizarre…
No reviewer responses for this chapter because I have to go to school in about fifteen minutes, and I haven't eaten yet.