I'm so sorry this took so long! But, we had no internet for like a week, and I couldn't exactly post without internet, could I?
On a somewhat related note, I finally found a BETA reader. Many thanks to LilMissCaprice for agreeing to do this for me.
On a completely unrelated note, I'm completely obssessed with the Scottish band Silly Wizard right now. Does anyone know where Ican find their records? I can't find them anywhere!
anyways, you're not here to hear me rant, you want to read the story! So, here his chapter eight!
Standard disclaimer applies.
Chapter Eight
A couple of short minutes were spent in silence before the door swung open several times in rapid succession, ushering in two people, a boy and a girl each time. Two armed guards, presumably escorting them, were seen briefly through the door, but they didn't enter the room.
Kaoru looked each new person to enter over thoroughly, trying to spot a common trait or similarity amongst them all, something to link them together, to tell him why they were all stuck in here so he could maybe at least attempt to discern what was going to happen to them.
There were four couples (for lack of a better word), ranging in age from five or so to mid-twenties. Kaoru noted that not everyone had been paired with someone as close to their age as he and Julie were. There was an older pair, a couple more teens close in age to Julie and Kaoru, two kids who couldn't have been more than eight years old, and a young girl with a boy who looked to be about thirteen.
He moved on to individuals, but there was no discernable pattern there either.
The littlest girl looked to be about five. Her hair was cut in neat lines that angled downwards toward her jaw line, and it was pitch black. Her face was pale and appeared to be tear streaked. Her roommate, the boy of about thirteen, held her in his arms. He was very thin, and Kaoru didn't think he could do very much if faced with a fight.
He was a bit of an oddity; his hair was sandy brown and spiky, and his features were sharp, pointed. His entire body was angular, his ears appeared slightly pointed, and his eyes were hazel, flecked with green and gold. He reminded Kaoru of an elf, like the ones in that English movie that had been on late one night when he hadn't been able to sleep. "Lord of the Rings", or something such.
Tow much smaller children sat with one another on the floor in the corner, huddled up in the foetal position. Kaoru couldn't see much of their faces, as their knees were drawn up to their chins, but they looked to be about seven or eight years old. The girl of the pair had long, golden brown hair, and the boy's was a dark chestnut brown. This was all that Kaoru could see of them from his vantage point.
The next pair seemed to be about the same age as Kaoru and Julie. That was where the similarities ended though- this new pair couldn't have been more different than the two of them if they had tried.
The boy looked more traditionally Japanese than Kaoru ever would, but when he turned to speak to the girl, he had an English accent. His hair was pitch black, his eyes dark brown. He was muscular, but not excessively so. Even so, it was so much more powerful than Kaoru's slender frame.
The only thing that this other girl and Julie shared was their eye colour; a deep blue that looked to be almost bottomless.
This girl was soft curves while Julie was sharp angles. This girl had soft, golden blonde hair with a slight bounced wave to it. Julie's hair was short and rather wild, though it was long and ramrod straight in the picture inside the locket. The biggest difference was, however, the way they held themselves.
This girl held herself meekly, without much confidence; it made her look fragile, weak, easily broken. Julie, however, held herself confidently- she was strong and would not back down from a challenge.
There was only one pair older than them, who looked to be in their early twenties. The girl's hair was auburn and fell to the centre of her back in cascading waves. She seemed sure of herself, not quite so confident as Julie, but not timid like the other teen either. She looked like she could take care of herself.
The boy with her seemed… aloof. His hair was such a dark brown that it looked almost black, his ice blue eyes scanning the room with an air of detached interest. He also looked like he could take care of himself, yet there was a certain harshness in his eyes that made Kaoru sure that if it mean saving himself, he would sacrifice most anything.
Kaoru had wanted to further observe everyone, see how they interacted with one another, but at that moment Doctor Peterson and William returned. William was bouncing with some sort of perverted excitement, while the doctor seemed to be mildly annoyed.
The whispering that had been going on between a couple of the pairs ceased abruptly when James walked in; he smiled rather nastily at this and began to speak.
"Welcome," he began. "I'm sure you are all wondering why exactly you are here today."
Julie muttered in Kaoru's ear, sarcasm dripping from her voice, "No, really? I thought we were here to have tea and scones."
Kaoru muffled his giggle in a groan of pain.
The doctor had waited for her to stop talking before he continued to speak.
"I will get around to explaining exactly that in a couple of minutes. However, I believe some background information may be helpful to you before begin."
He paused again, and Julie took this as her cue to "translate".
"He's talking as if the three little ones aren't even there! How are they supposed to understand eloquent language like that?"
"What does eloquent mean?"
She gave him a look, and he shrugged his shoulders and smiled in response. Her expression softened.
"Are you quite done, Miss Rutherford-Hopkins?" the doctor asked impatiently, effectively ruining the moment. Julie's face darkened slightly in a blush as she replied, "Yes, sir." William's eyes were shining as he stared at them, a giddy smile on his face.
"I do not own the facility we are currently residing in. it belongs to my younger brother, Harold. He has lent it to me from the goodness of his heart." You could almost feel the sarcasm in his voice once he reached the end of his sentence.
"Unfortunately, nothing comes for free, even when it comes to your very own family."
"This," he pointed at William, "is Harold's only son, William. He has some rather… interesting fantasies that he would like to see come to life. My brother has insisted that I allow him to borrow some of you, my patients, for this purpose."
The entire time he was speaking, the doctor would stop every couple of sentences, then Julie would mutter nonsense into Kaoru's ear. It was very difficult to focus on the severity of the situation at hand with her murmuring such strange things in his ear. Kaoru's personal favourite was, "Last week, my pet toilet paper ingested some deodorant. It made her very fuchsia. Eggnog! Look, a flying turtle on a stick…"
The doctor seemed to have finished his speech, so Julie quickly spouted out one last sentence; "The purple elephants are cuddling with some neon green mustard." She looked up and nodded the doctor, who then began to speak again.
"Now William has to make a decision; two of you, one pair, will have to be eliminated from this group. I will allow him some time to do what he pleases with you now, to aid in the decision making process. If you'll excuse me, I have an appointment. Good-day."
He walked out and they all simultaneously turned to look at William, who gave them a bright smile.
"Okay! Everybody, I'm William, but you can call me Will. How about we all go around the room and say something about ourselves!"
Nobody said a word. Will took this as a go-ahead, and announced, sounding much happier than any normal person should have been, "Okay! I'll go first!"
"My name is William Peterson, I'm 27 years old, and I'm an only child. My favourite colour is green."
He pointed to the oldest boy. "You next."
The boy looked around, then lazily replied, "My name is Jeremiah Stevenson, and I'm a fraternal twin from North Carolina. I'm 22 years old, and I'm a psychology major in university."
The older girl spoke next. "Hello," she said in a lovely, lilting voice, "my name is Mairie, spelt M-A-I-R-I-E, and I'm an identical twin from Dublin, Ireland. I'm twenty-one, and I enjoy taking walks in the mountains near my home in my spare time."
Silence fell for a moment, then Will pointed to the small boy who was huddled up in the corner. "Your turn, boy. Tell us about yourself."
The boy began to cry softly. For a moment everybody just stood there, then Julie made a noise of exasperation, rose from her place and walked over to him. She crouched down before him and said, "Do you speak English honey?"
The boy nodded and looked up, murky hazel eyes still filled with tears.
"Okay," Julie continued, "well, how about you tell us your name to start."
"Mark Crawford."
"Wonderful. Okay, Mark. Are you an identical or fraternal twin?"
"Identical."
"Lovely. How about you tell us where you're from now, sweetheart."
"Alabama."
"Alright, good. You're doing really great Mark. Now, how old are you?"
"Eight and three quarters."
"Splendid. Last question, okay? What is your favourite T.V. show?"
"Bakugan Battle Brawlers: New Vestroia."
"That is a pretty cool show," Julie said, smiling, "I sometimes watch it with my little cousin, Marshall. You did an awesome job though Mark."
She patted him on the head and stood to leave. He grabbed her leg and said, "Please don't leave. You're nice. Everyone else here is mean to me. They hurt me sometimes. But you're different. You're nice. So please… don't leave me."
Julie sighed and smiled gently, then reached out her hand towards the small child.
"Come on then."
Mark hesitantly took her hand, and together they walked back to the bed. She settled in next to Kaoru, crossing her legs, leaning back on her hands, and Mark took a seat on her lap.
The little girl who had been sitting on the floor next to Mark looked like she, too, was going to burst into tears. Julie noticed this after a couple of moments, and said, "You can come and sit with us as well, if you like."
The girl immediately bolted over to the bedside and tackled Kaoru, who gasped as a sharp jolt of white-hot pain burned through his torso.
"Sweetheart," Julie said to the girl, shaking her shoulder, "sweetheart, you need to get off of Kaoru now. He's in quite a lot of pain at the moment. Come, you can sit here with Mark and I."
The young girl clambered off of Kaoru and leaped over to Julie, rolling up from where she had landed on the bed, as Mark shifted over to sit on only Julie's left leg. The girl then plopped down on the now unoccupied side of Julie's lap. The pain in Kaoru's chest began to ease away slowly, but didn't leave completely.
Will turned to the girl after watching the proceedings with an avid interest.
"It is your turn now. Please, tell us about yourself."
The girl didn't say anything, but leaned back towards Julie, slight fear on her face.
"Come on, hon," Julie said, "tell us about you."
She looked puzzled. "What do you want me to say?"
Julie looked at Will, who nodded, before she continued, "Well, let's start with your name."
"Okay! I'm Leanna Miller." She turned to Julie again. "What next?"
"Now tell us how old you are."
"I'm seven and one half years old. What should I say now?" she asked Julie once again.
"Where are you from?"
"Not sure. We've lived in South Africa for as long as I can remember, but daddy says him and mommy came there from a place called Newcastle."
"That's interesting, hon. Now, are you an identical or fraternal twin?
"Fraternal! Is that all?"
"One last question and then that's it; what is your very favourite food?"
"Mangoes! They're yummy!"
"Okay. Good job, Leanna. You're finished now."
Will turned to look at the English boy. He seemed to understand this silent cue, as he began to speak an instant later.
"Hello everyone. My name is Daniel Wright. I'm an identical twin from Manchester, England. I'm sixteen years old, and something interesting about me is that I'm mixed- my mom was Chinese, my dad's English."
'That explains his appearance,' Kaoru thought to himself.
It was now the turn of the timid-looking girl next to him. "Hi there," she started, speaking haltingly in heavily accented English, "I am Ka-ther-rine Finn. Fra-ter-nal twin from Sweden. I have fifteen years, and I enjoy trad-ition-al dan-cing."
The rooms attention was now focused upon the only pair with a noticeable age difference between them.
The boy whispered something into the ear of the little girl, who then raised a quiet, shaking, accented voice, "I'm Cecilia Jacobs. I am five and one quarter. I live in Australia, and me and my sister are identical. I like Harry Potter."
She looked at them all for a moment with wide eyes, then buried her face in the boy's chest.
He laughed softly and stroked her hair as he introduced himself.
"My name's Seamus O'Connolly, and I'm from Glasgow, Scotland. My sister and I are fraternal; like night and day my mother says. I am thirteen years old, and I'm a fairly decent archer."
It was Julie's turn to speak now, and she did so with the quiet confidence that seemed to pervade her movement.
"Hello everybody. I'm Julie Rutherford-Hopkins, and I'm Canadian, from Ontario. I'm just barely sixteen and I'm a fraternal twin; my brother's name is Joshua. One fact about me is that I can speak twenty-two languages fluently, and another twenty-one half-decently."
"Twenty-two languages?" Jeremiah asked, "That's not possible!"
Julie smirked. "Yes it is. Clearly."
His eyes narrowed.
"Prove it."
She cocked her head. "How?"
"Name them, to start. All of them."
Julie gave an evil sort of grin and then said, "Okay. You asked for it."
One deep breath later and she was off.
"I can fluently speak English, French, Spanish, Gaelic, several Native American dialects, Portuguese, Mandarin, Russian, German, Polish, Swedish, Creole, Greek, Italian, a tiny bit of Latin, mostly I just read it, Swahili, Arabic, sign language, both American and otherwise, Dutch, Romanian, Czech, and, as I have already demonstrated, Japanese. I am competent in Islamic, Hawaiian, Korean, Cantonese, Turkish, Hungarian, Finnish, Ukrainian, Tibetan, Bulgarian, Danish, Hindi, Welsh, Indonesian, Macedonian, Vietnamese, Norwegian, Persian, Sanskrit, Thai and Hebrew."
There was a stunned silence before William said, "Okay! Let's move on to the last person!"
"Pretend I'm helping you, okay?" Julie said to Kaoru, and he nodded.
"Hello," he said, trying to sound unconfident, "I am Kaoru Hitachiin. I am from Japan. I am age…"
Here he paused and turned to Julie, muttering, "Forgot the word," all a part of the act. She promptly replied, "Sixteen," in English.
He dutifully recited "I am age sixteen. My twin is Hikaru. We are…" he pretended to search for the word, "identical. I enjoy playing the video games."
"Good job." Julie whispered to him, reverting to Japanese. Leanna and Mark looked at her in awe.
"You can really speak all those languages?" Leanna asked shyly.
"Yes, I can." she replied, smiling.
"Can you show us?" Mark inquired eagerly. 'This kid sure bounces back quickly…' Kaoru thought.
"Umm… Sure."
Julie looked a tad uncomfortable being put on the spot like this, as all eyes in the room were now fixed on her. She thought for a moment, then began to speak.
"I can speak English. Je peux parler en Français."
Kaoru noticed that while Julie spoke, William was examining them all with a calculating look on his face. That look, mixed with those disturbing silver eyes, made Kaoru shudder internally.
Julie's hands were now moving in a series of shapes.
Glancing back at William, Kaoru deduced that he must have come to some sort of conclusion, as the calculating look had changed to one of slightly perverted satisfaction.
"Yo hablo Español."
The words had barely left her mouth, leaving the other occupants of the room in a stunned silence, when Doctor Peterson walked back in.
"Have you come to a decision?" he asked William sharply.
"Yes. After careful consideration, I have made my choice. It was very difficult, but I have decided to cut Daniel and Katherine from the group."
James nodded. "Very well. The two of you may go."
The doors opened and the two guards who had escorted them in appeared. Daniel and Katherine walked over to them and left the room. The door closed.
The doctor spoke again. "You may all return to your rooms now. William will come to brief you all one, or two as it may be, at a time and explain what it is that he would like for you to do."
James turned to the door. "Good day to you all."
William waited by the doorway while each pair left for their rooms, along with their guards, who had been waiting outside the doors all along, before departing himself, leaving Julie and Kaoru in horrified anticipation once again.
The atmosphere was very tense. Julie had a dark, brooding cast to her eyes, and it was killing Kaoru. In an attempt to lighten both the air and her mood, he said, "Everything always happens to us, doesn't it?"
Julie gave him a bitter half-smile, and a glance from the corner of her eyes.
"Yes, I suppose it does."
Note That is Really Important: I have a major writers block on this story, so it probably won't be updated for a while. Sorry. But, I am planning a Marauders-era Potter story, so look for it, should be up in the next couple days...
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K so if anyone lives in any of the countries mentionned, two things; You can tell me about any inconsistencies, and I'm sorry if anything seemed stereotyped, I didn't mean any offence. Thank you.
Oh, I got some anonymous reviews last chapter, so I'm gonna reply to them here, kay? You don't need to read this unless you are one of the people who left one. Or you just enjoy reading peoples review responces...
Infinite Sorrow: Well, that's why I need a BETA, right? I write at two in the morning oftentimes, so as long as the story makes sense, I don't care about spelling. Also, I am Canadian, so I spell words like "colour" and "favourite" with an extra "U" in them. Plus, you can always just make your own hotmail account to get fanfiction... That's what I did. Mostly because I was tierd of my dad reading my persoal e-mails. Not that you have to, it's just an option. If you aren't comfortable with it, you don't have to. Anyways, I'm glad you're enjoying it!
Aaannniiimmmeee Anime: Hmm... Only one? :( Well, if I had to choose, I suppose Mori from Ouran. He seems like a good listener and not overprotective, but he'll always be there for you. And I'm a quiet person by nature, so I don't think I could deal with someone loud like Tamaki or the twins. Or, unfortunatly, Kyo... I was really torn between Mori and Hatori in Fruits Basket actually, but I decided my dear Haa-san was too old for me, so Mori it is :) However, I am already married to Sirius Black from Harry Potter, so this is all null and void.
Shows to watch... I loved Clannad, and it's similar in type to Furuba and Ouran, so that one is good. I also love Black Butler, but it's more on the supernatural side, and it's more violent and deals with slightly more mature subject matter, so I dunno if you'll like that one...