Dedicated to Lady Simantha, as thanks for taking one of my plotbunnies off my hands. I offered to write her a giftfic in thanks, but she said she'd rather I spend that time on the stuff I was working on instead of adding something to my plate.

Tao was the first down in the morning – he knew he was supposed to get so much sleep every night, so he'd gone to bed early so he wasn't underfoot while Boss was doing things. Also he wanted to be the first to see what was going on, what the punishment was, before Takeo and M-21 could come down.

When he turned the light on he was sitting there like always – no, not like always, on one of the couches instead of his chair.

Tao had to get closer, lean over and stare, because Boss' head was on his lap? Really? He seemed totally at ease though, when Tao glanced at his face. Tao looked back down to see that there was a soft smile on Boss' lips, and he looked warm and gentle, glowing with happiness. He looked so utterly relaxed that Tao checked to see if Boss had relaxed his grip on his powers enough to start literally glowing, but no, he wasn't casting any shadows.

Of course Boss would have sensed that Tao was looming over him. Boss opened his eyes, holding his finger to his lips to signal that he couldn't talk, smiling slightly.

Raizel was frowning slightly down at him, like he was perfectly aware punished people shouldn't look that happy, but just didn't have the heart to try to actually punish Franken and make him suffer when he looked like that.

So was the punishment that Boss wasn't allowed to talk? Tao wondered if touching Raizel was part of the punishment too, given how Frankenstein felt about his master's dignity, but Takeo had fallen asleep on Raizel with Frankenstein there when Frankenstein was teaching Raizel about hugging and pressure points, and there was no way Takeo wouldn't have woken up if he sensed Frankenstein's angry aura. Tao was still sure he was missing something.

If… if someone else was punishing Boss, they'd punish him for being difficult, but Raizel just let it go because Frankenstein clearly couldn't help it and went back to reviewing his Calculus notes.

If this was what a contract was like…. No, just knowing that they even could be like this, Tao wanted one. Not now, though. Not when he didn't want just any contract, he wanted one like this and Boss might have gotten lucky and just ended up in the house of the best noble (if Raizel hadn't had something to do with it), but Tao wasn't going to rely on luck, not when he could write matchmaking software.

"His punishment is the Previous Lord's suggestion: he does not have my permission to work, or assist anyone, until midnight tomorrow," Raizel said, glancing down at Frankenstein with not exactly suspicion, but 'I know you're going to be difficult about this and I will handle it.'

Which was nice, that he knew that Boss really couldn't help himself and that was going to be okay. He would never hurt Boss for being Boss.

"I have been forced to withdraw his permission to speak," Raizel told Tao.

Someone else would have gloried in having that much power over Frankenstein, but not Raizel. He was apologizing for how Frankenstein couldn't talk to Tao right now?

"Since Boss is out of commission, I'll bring you the tea cookies," Tao said, straightening up and clapping his hands together.

Raizel shook his head elegantly and explained that, "Frankenstein normally brings me tea cookies. It is not a punishment if his work is still done."

"Why don't I bring Boss some tea cookies, then?" Tao went to go do that. "If you're making him relax, he should have something to eat, right?" he said, putting the plate down by Raizel's tea cup.

Raizel nodded after a moment. "I am unfamiliar with punishments other than eternal sleep," he confessed, picking up a tea cookie.

Soooo… that meant he'd be grateful if Tao could tell him how it was done? And that meant Tao could probably make him stop doing something if it wasn't okay? Right, Raizel was an empath, so with that link he'd probably know right away if something was really bothering Boss, and it just made sense that he wouldn't hurt Boss when that would hurt him too, right?

Instead of eating the tea cookie, Raizel held it to Frankenstein's lips with a very serious expression on his face.

Was he feeding Boss? The way Boss kept putting food in front of Raizel even though Raizel wasn't human and didn't need extra calories after recovering from injuries?

Extra calories Union experiments might get. Or not.

Tao wished he could stay home and watch, but he had to guard the school. Tao was supposed to learn how to do things, and even if Raizel didn't have as much practice taking care of people as Frankenstein did, it was just… something Tao had seen a lot more of since he got here.

He was worried that seeing someone punished was going to be horrible, because that was what punishments were, but he should have known they weren't like that. This place wasn't like that. Nothing was horrible here, with them, except the thought of losing them.

If they really could get the Union out of the way… "Wouldn't it be great if everywhere was like Ye Ran? Boss would do a much better job ruling the world than the Union." Hmm…

Tao saw his head jerk, alarmed. "You must not," he said. "Humans must not be controlled by those with more power than they possess."

Aww. Tao frowned deliberately cutely. "No taking over the world?" Even to give it to Raizel? It was obvious that Raizel didn't want it, but that would be a reason to give it to him. Well, if it weren't for the fact Tao didn't want Raizel to be all worried he wasn't taking good enough care of billions of humans, but he had Boss' help, right? So he wouldn't have to worry. Nah, he'd still worry, though, and Tao didn't care enough about people he'd never met to want Raizel to get that upset and maybe use up all his lifeforce. Raizel did Awakenings for the people he was responsible for! So no, he definitely couldn't make Raizel responsible for more people, even if Boss had found a way to maybe make him better.

Raizel shook his head, calming now, letting out a sigh of relief.

"Wouldn't it be nice though?" Tao asked, mostly hypothetically. "If everywhere was like this?" If everyone could be this happy?

"Would you truly be happy," Raizel – the Noblesse – asked him, "if it was forced upon you, without respect for your will?"

If someone was making him live the way they wanted him to live, without giving him a choice? Making him serve someone else, ordering him to do a job… "No," he said, and sighed. Darn.

Raizel handed him a tea cookie and, when it was accepted, gave him a consoling pat on the shoulder. "Creating a path that leads the nobles to a better future is difficult even for the Lords. It is a sacred and worthy calling." So Tao shouldn't feel like he had to give up on changing the world, but, "It is not something that can be accomplished by force. That is why the strongest of the nobles wields no authority to tell nobles how to live."

No, it was the Noblesse's job to stop other people from forcing people into things.

Right, okay, no taking over the world.

He wasn't going to do that to Raizel. Raizel cared about him, so he couldn't become an offender Raizel had to eliminate. He wasn't going to hurt him the way the traitor nobles had.

Nope, no way. Never.

"Can I see the charms?" he asked. He'd seen Raizel eat one of them not long before Boss started laughing, so they might have something to do with Raizel 'making it possible' for Boss to extend his lifespan.

Raizel nodded and held up a wrist, holding his notebook in his other hand and watching it instead of Tao. Tao hesitated, but it really was less likely to offend than hugging, right? So he held that wrist and started to turn the charm bracelet around it.

A frying pan with a hole in it was a giveaway even without the unicorn, and the wolf, and, "This is me!" he said happily when he found the laptop.

The hair tie had to be Takeo, and the apple Boss. Tao would have thought a gun for Takeo… but then after Krans absorbed Shark, Tao found out that they weren't really allowed to choose their own weapons and specialties, but they were determined in advance so Krans would get the right powers. Takeo knew a lot about guns, and spent a lot of time maintaining his, but were guns his hobby and computers Tao's because of who they were, or because of how the Union made them?

"So what was the one you ate?" he asked Raizel.

The noble turned to him, looked at him for a moment, and said one word: "Ramyeon."

Tao laughed, scratching the back of his head. "Right." That was kind of obvious, heh. Was that the reason Raizel ate it at all? He probably wanted comfort food after having to try to calm down Frankenstein when he was that upset, and Raizel was serious about his ramyeon. So yeah, it made sense that he'd try eating a charm if it was a ramyeon charm.

Something about that…

"Boss?" He looked down at him, and Boss opened his eyes again, clearly wondering what was it now. "I think you made a mistake making most of them symbolize people. I mean, humans are friends, not food!"

Raizel nodded without looking down at Boss. Was there a little color on his cheeks? Tao remembered how embarrassed Regis got at the 'munch munch' thing.

Boss might not be able to talk-talk right now, but the way he lifted up his hand and facepalmed said it all.

Ikhan frowned, adjusting his glasses when he saw, "Rai isn't with you guys?" Rai was never late to school.

When he could come at all.

Oh crap, M-21 realized. They should have decided on a cover story before they left the house. The nobles didn't do what the Union did and burn out memories. What the kids had been through was still in there, and even though M-21 wished it didn't have to be, it was still better that way. What Frankenstein did to the kids for their sakes was nothing like what the Union did to M-21, so he could be okay with it, but the fact that nothing had been… stolen from the kids meant that they worried.

About Rai. Even about M-21.

He wished he had a cover story, and found Takeo was also looking at Tao.

"The Chairman has been overworking himself," Seira said before Tao could reel off something utterly ridiculous. "We were concerned that if he was left unsupervised, even at home, he would start doing paperwork again. Raizel has so much work to catch up with," after spending days asleep in that coffin, "that he has had difficulties following the class lectures. He decided to study at home and get caught up so we did not fall behind and Takeo and the others did not use up their vacation days."

"Right, you guys have been missing a lot of days of work, going with the Chairman to those conferences, huh?" Shinwoo said. "And taking Regis home."

M-21 nodded, making a mental note that 'attending conferences' was the cover story for their training on the island. Frankenstein always took Seira out on the weekends, because she took much better notes than Regis did, so it worked out better if she attended class and Regis studied her notes.

"Don't worry, I was going to record today's lectures anyway," Ikhan said. "Who knows how much time Shinwoo'll spend asleep?"

"Regis watched all the classes you recorded on the plane," Tao told Ikhan.

True, except they took a helicopter, not a plane.

Regis nodded. "Of course I did. It would be inelegant not to, when Ikhan troubled himself for my sake."

"It really wasn't a lot of trouble," Ikhan said, but he still sounded happy.

"Isn't it exhausting going back and forth like that?" Suyi asked, to change the subject. Gratitude got complicated for nobles, or maybe it was that it was very simple for them (since nobles really didn't need repayment for what they did the way humans could die without a paycheck) and that was why the proper courtesies could be incompatible with how humans did it. And Regis was always trying to be proper and courteous, so they could end up talking in circles. "Jet lag can get nasty."

"I'm fine."

"Of course he is," Shinwoo agreed. "Our little Regis is tough."

Regis looked pleased (or rather, 'well, of course should I be offended that you're even mentioning it,' which was pleased for Regis) while Seira nodded.

"If Rai's okay, I'm going to head into the classroom so I can get my head down on the desk and catch some sleep before class starts," Shinwoo said, stretching.

"Wait, what about the Chairman?" Yuna realized, and Shinwoo stopped to listen. "Is he worried about his nephew?" Was that why he was under extra stress?

"Nephew?" Tao asked, before snapping his fingers. "You mean Rael! What makes you think they're related?"

"He isn't?" Yuna looked at Seira.

The noble could only shake her head, looking slightly scandalized that someone had insulted her teacher like that.

"Our school is, um." Ikhan blushed.

"Problem students," Shinwoo said cheerfully. "Ikhan and I used to get in so much trouble back in the day. And Yuna used to be really shy because other kids would pick on her." He cracked his knuckles meaningfully.

"You still get in a lot of trouble now," Suyi said, shaking her head. "The principal and our teachers are really great about me missing so much school for my career," she explained. "I study while I'm away, but Mr. Park does a lot of extra work giving me lesson plans in advance. Shinwoo was suspended from our middle school half the time, and Ikhan got expelled."

Shinwoo for being late and getting into fights, sure, but M-21 looked at Ikhan.

"I was really bored!" Ikhan said, embarrassed. "Most schools wouldn't let me bring a computer into class, especially after what I did to my last school's computer system, but I really can't pay attention without it. A lot of my family are police officers, and the Chairman went to the station to talk to my uncle about patrol routes and how he should recommend students get to school, and he came to dinner at our house and that's how I got into Ye Ran," he confessed. "I really didn't have very good grades."

"Even before you got expelled," Shinwoo agreed. "Ikhan's parents used to feed me while my dad was out of town. Not like I have the grades for this place, even with the Chairman helping me out. Never went over to his place before we met Rai, but I was in and out of his office a lot."

"That's not something to be proud of," Suyi said. "Isn't that mostly because you get in fights?"

"He said that since I trained so much I had a work ethic; the problem was how to keep me from just giving up on school until I figured out how to apply that work ethic to my studies. And it's not my fault people keep picking on people from my school," Shinwoo said with a grin. "They should know better by now, between me and Ajussi."

M-21 blinked. Shinwoo would pick fights with enhanced humans to protect his friends – hell, protect nobles he'd just met. Had Frankenstein seen that in him and was that why he'd wanted Shinwoo for Ye Ran? Because that sounded like the kind of thing Frankenstein would do.

No.

That sounded like what he had done, when he hired M-21. A punk, a failure, but now he was school security, he got to protect the kids M-24 had protected.

He could picture it now: Shinwoo getting sent to the principal's office after getting into a fight, all defiant because no way could he just watch someone getting beaten up in front of him, he wasn't going to be able to apologize and back down without being really obviously lying… and Frankenstein smiling at him, saying, 'Just don't kill them.' Or as long as Shinwoo kept up his training so he could be sure he could take them down without seriously injuring them, then Frankenstein certainly wasn't going to get on his case about protecting people.

If Yuna was Rai, she'd be sighing right now, so it looked like M-21 was right.

"It would have taken us forever to get caught up with the rest of our class if Yuna hadn't made us study with her," Ikhan said, noticing M-21 looking at Yuna.

"Well, your parents insisted on paying me," Yuna said, blushing. "But they're right, I used to… I used to embarrass myself all the time, nothing I said was the right thing, but no one bullies anyone here, so I got more practice talking to people. I'm still not…" She fiddled with her hands, looking down at them. "I'm still not brave enough to say some things, but…" Her eyes glanced up at them before she hurriedly looked down again.

"We get a lot of trust fund babies," Suyi cut in before Yuna could get any more embarrassed. "Because everybody knows the school will make them shape up. So I get a lot of people asking me how to get into Ye Ran. The Chairman's really well-connected. I don't think I've gotten any jobs just because I'm a Ye Ran student, but I've met a lot of alumni and parents of alumni and it doesn't hurt. That was part of why I was so shocked that you guys just went over to the Chairman's house after school," she told the other three. "Do you know how much trouble Hansu Jeong got into after people found out he made an ass of himself on our campus? He tried to blame it all on his bodyguard, but everyone ended up knowing that was the only reason he'd hired the guy, so that he could order him to bully people and it wouldn't be Hansu's fault the American was acting like an American." She rolled her eyes.

The government connections that got the KSA that funding, a big family in the police department, now the entertainment industry?

M-21 snorted. Wasn't like he hadn't known Frankenstein was scary.

"Seriously, guys," Suyi said. "Would it kill you to be a little more respectful towards our teachers? Nobody wants to anger the Chairman after that, because the next thing you know a big advertiser will have a kid on the waiting list for Ye Ran."

"He's really nice," Yuna said. "He's really understanding about a lot of things. We thought that someone asked him to help Rael even though Rael's too old to go to our school."

"Yeah, that's what happened!" Tao seized the opening while M-21 was thinking about how Yuna wasn't entirely wrong but putting it that way… "They're just not related," Tao quickly insisted. "Rael's dad was a friend of his or something."

The kids were smart: M-21 could see them notice the was.

"We should invite him along with us sometime," Shinwoo said, and M-21 wasn't nice enough to say that no, Rael would really rather they didn't. "If he's like Yuna and Rai and has trouble with social stuff, the only way to get better is to practice, right." Crossing his arms, he nodded: so the matter was settled and Rael was now condemned to socializing with human high school students on pain of making Raizel sad his friends' feelings were hurt by how Rael kept saying no to their invitations.

"That would be nice of you," Takeo said, smiling. "He could use more friends."

And the thing was, M-21 thought, staring at him, he meant that.

Suyi tapped her watch – they needed to get moving for class.

"Can we come by the security station at recess?" Ikhan asked.

"Sure!" Tao said, definitely making a mental note to have all the extra screens and cameras retracted back into the desk and ceiling before the kids came in.

The kids started to head to the classroom, but Shinwoo trailed behind. "Um, Seira?"

"We should start patrolling," Takeo said pointedly, pulling Tao away from the new conversation and towards the soccer field.

No fool, M-21 followed. Frankenstein wasn't the only scary person in the house. His ears were still perked up enough to hear Shinwoo say, "I'm kind of nervous because when I told Yuna this she didn't know what to do and it was really awkward for her, but… um… I mean not today, we got to go make sure Rai and the Chairman are okay, but…"

Yeah, no, he was not getting in the middle of that. Even Tao was double-timing it now.

Wait: if Frankenstein really did have people lining up to dump their problem kids on him, then what did they think was up with Raizel?

Yuna and Rai: that was what Shinwoo said.

M-21 thought he was so strange because he was a 'noblesse' at first, but his classmates didn't remember that he was a noble, so they had to think he was a human. Which meant he was a really weird human.

…Or was there something up with Raizel? Regis and Seira were much better at acting human, but they had spent a few years in the human world preparing for Regis' majority and Raizel was trapped in the manor.

Still, a lot of the nobles did act like he was weird, even for a noble. Just in a good way, because he was really 'elegant.' But how much of that was because Raizel knew to not say anything when he didn't know what to say and stuff like that?

Now that M-21 thought about it, it seemed obvious that Raizel wasn't normal, even for nobles. It wasn't just Regis and Seira: even the ones on that island acted a lot more human than he did.

So was he… different, the way M-21 wasn't a normal human anymore? Was that part of why Frankenstein became Raizel's comrade, because they both were different? And then the school Frankenstein built for Raizel… was that why M-21 couldn't find any normal people here? Because it would take a place where strange was normal for the Noblesse and an enhanced human with a werewolf heart to have a normal life?

There are so many shiny things I want to ramble on about in A/Ns, but they really should be explored in future chapters instead. Eg. the meaning of the word 'contract.'

Yuna is unusually awkward for a member of the Noblesse cast, and her childhood friends were mainly very weird kids. Weird kids often stick together. She misread social convention enough to do something as a friendly gesture that Shinwoo thought was a clear expression of romantic feelings.

So the three of them meet Rai, and 'doesn't know how to act normal' equals 'like Yuna,' and that's part of why they adopt him.

Given Frankenstein's thing for helping people… we know he and Shinwoo knew each other before the webtoon started, but we also know from Suyi that he doesn't directly interact much with most of the student body, at least not more than is normal for a principal. Still, when Shinwoo wants classes to resume, I figure a lot of the student body is very loyal to their school.

…but I should save a certain worldbuilding idea that hit me for a future chapter instead of just A/Ns. Short version: Rai's Adventure confirming that non-modified human psychics exist in the 'verse plus Ye Ran taking in 'weird' students equals? If Sense Evil is a common human ability in the Noblesse 'verse that'd give them some chance of staying out of Union labs, and someone has to warn young psychics about the Union.