There's a Method to This Madness

Ten short stories about friends and family, written for 42_souls.

Part 07: How to Survive the First Date

Prompt: Chaos ((troika+rivals))

It was a rare day that Liz, Patti, and Kid were dismissed from school before sunset. Usually they had training after class, or a last-minute mission assignment, or extra work from Kid's father to deal with. But today there was none of that. Liz was looking forward to getting to go shopping during normal daylight hours, before the stores in Death City actually closed for the night. She and Patti were going shopping together, but not before they had to walk Kid home first. That was all right, though. Liz didn't mind being able to spend a little bit of time with him before she and Patti were free to enjoy the rest of their afternoon without him.

The three of them crossed the brick courtyard in front of Shibusen, hand-in-hand. Other groups of students were milling around, laughing and chatting. Patti said something, and Kid laughed. Liz wasn't paying attention to what Patti said, though. She was slowly starting to become aware that eyes were watching her. Six pairs of eyes, to be exact. A group of younger girls on the far side of the courtyard had been watching Kid and his partners since they had begun descending the stairs down to the courtyard moments before. Liz turned her head and glared at the girls. Now what? Was one of the younger students going to challenge Kid to a duel or something? One of the girls met Liz's glare and returned it with her own. Uh-oh. Then she stepped toward Liz, and began walking resolutely across the courtyard. The other girls followed her lead.

Kid saw them, too. He stopped in his tracks. So did Patti and Liz.

"Uh-oh," Patti giggled. "Looks like they wanna do a duel with us."

"No," said Kid, peering carefully at the lead girl as she approached. "There's no fighting intent in her soul."

Liz elbowed Kid. "Stop spying on people's souls."

"Liz, I'm not spying," Kid insisted. He let go of Liz and Patti's hands, then frowned, squinting at the lead girl as she approached again. "Her wavelength is full of envy right now. That's odd."

Liz suddenly realized what exactly the other girl was after. She wasn't about to challenge them to a duel – at least not a duel of physical combat. Liz sighed wearily. This happened every now and then, especially with the younger, stupider, more arrogant little girls in the lower grades. That was all right, though. Patti and Liz had long ago developed a foolproof strategy for dealing with situations like this. "Hey, Kid," Liz said. "I didn't want to tell you this, because I knew that you were going to freak out about it, but now I've changed my mind and I think that you should know. Today I noticed that some of the candelabras in the third floor of the east wing were slightly crooked."

Kid's head snapped around toward Liz, his eyes widening with alarm. "Liz, are you serious?"

"I'm pretty sure. They looked pretty crooked to me. I can't really tell without a level, though."

"I have a level," Kid said. He had two levels, actually, as he always kept one in both of the front pockets of his pants. Kid whirled around and began running back across the courtyard, instantly forgetting about the girl who was walking straight toward him. "I'll be back in a minute!" Kid shouted over his shoulder as he ran.

Liz figured that he would be back in two, possibly three hours. She watched Kid run away for a moment, then turned her head back toward the girl who was still marching fearlessly toward herself and Patti.

The girl stopped right in front of Patti. She glared at Liz. "Did you just make him run away? Did you do that on purpose?"

"Yes," Liz answered smoothly, "because I wanted to do this without him hanging around and interfering. Now let's get this over with. What do you want?" Liz hadn't failed to notice the oversized metal cross hanging from the other girl's necklace, or the cross earrings on her ears. That meant that she was the religious type. Great.

Liz didn't like religious types. They tended to have funny ideas about gods and even funnier ideas about how humans and weapons should interact with gods. Liz had nothing but contempt for the way that religious types understood God, especially now that Liz knew that God was a lunatic who collected kewpie dolls and banjoes from around the world and his son was an even bigger lunatic who liked to fold toilet paper triangles for hours on end and who was turned on by symmetrical lingerie and who gave amazing oral sex. Liz didn't like to think of Kid or his father as divine beings – it was kind of hard to, especially when she'd seen Kid naked so many times and especially when she'd seen firsthand what an utterly terrible father Death so often was – and yet these nutjob religious types kept insisting that Death and his son were supposed to be revered and worshipped by humans. Or whatever. Liz inwardly laughed at their stupidity.

The girl rolled back her shoulders and stood up straight, defiant, craning her neck to be at her full height. Unfortunately she was still only as tall as Liz's shoulders. But with her five glowering friends behind her, she still managed to look mildly intimidating. "I am Lenore Van Rensselaer," she stated, flipping a lock of her perfectly curled, strawberry-blonde hair over her shoulder as she spoke. "Of the Manhattan Van Rensselaers. You've heard of us, yes? My father was a Death Scythe before he retired. My grandfather was Lord Death's personal Death Scythe, as was my great-great-grandfather, and my great-great-great-grandmother before him."

"Great," Liz said, rolling her eyes. Patti laughed.

Lenore ignored Patti. "I would like to formally request that you-"

Patti laughed again. "You're never gonna be Kid's partner!" she said. " 'Cause he's crazy and 'cause you're a musket."

Lenore wasn't taken aback by this retort. "Ah, so you have heard of me," she said. Then she smiled up at Liz, unnervingly. "I am aware that the young Death would not wish to take me as his weapon. I have no interest in him as a potential partner for me, either."

Oh great, Liz thought. Here it comes.

"I would like to formally request," Lenore began again, "that you two cease your sinful, ill-begotten relationship with the young Death, so that I and others more suitable for his affections may court him instead."

By now the other students milling about the brick courtyard had begun to notice the confrontation happening between Liz, Patti, Lenore, and the other girls. Slowly the other students began to drift toward them, forming a loose circle around the girls, murmuring with whispers.

"Pffffffft!" Patti's shoulders shook with laughter, as she clapped her hand over her mouth, struggling to contain it. Liz narrowed her eyes and stared down her nose at Lenore. "What was that about 'sinful' and 'ill-begotten' again?"

"She said she doesn't want us to fuck Kid anymore 'cause she wants to fuck Kid instead," Patti clarified, helpfully.

Lenore's lip curled with disgust. "See? This is what I mean. You two are vulgar, classless, lowborn white trash. Not only have you enticed the young Lord Death to engage in sinful debauchery with you, but you would have him committing the sin of bigamy as well! Have you no shame?"

"Whores!" one of the girls behind Lenore suddenly shouted. Then she went back to cowardly silence again.

The gathering crowd gasped.

Liz tapped her foot impatiently. "You don't actually understand what 'bigamy' is, do you?"

"Excuse me?" Lenore snapped.

" 'Bigamy' only refers to marriage, and we're not-"

"Filthy sluts!" Lenore spat. "That is exactly what makes you unacceptable as Lord Death's partners! You care nothing for decency or morality! You've seduced a divine being into engaging in immoral behavior outside the sanctified bounds of a true marriage!"

Liz suddenly had to struggle to stifle her own laughter. She still had a hard time thinking of Kid as a divine being, especially in light of the fact that something like an asymmetrical hangnail could reduce him to tearful hysteria in an instant.

Lenore apparently saw that Liz was trying not to laugh, however. That only made her angrier. "This is no laughing matter! You arrogant bitch. How dare you pretend that you're good enough for him! You have no lineage, no class, no morals, no proper education, and no sense of respect or common decency. You make a mockery of Death and everything that he stands for! It is because you two lead him astray that the young Death is unable to properly collect souls and unable to properly pass his classes here. I demand that you cease your repugnant relationship with him this instant!" Lenore took a deep breath, building toward her big finish. "If the young lord Death wishes to continue to keep you as his weapons of choice, then I will respect his decision to do so. But even if you are his weapons, neither of you has the right to engage in any further lasciviousness with him. Death deserves a proper courtship with a proper woman. Therefore I demand that you rescind your claim to a relationship with him immediately!"

Silence. The watching crowd held its breath, expectantly.

Liz turned toward Patti. "What do you think, Patti?"

"Ummmmm…." Patti ticked off on her fingers. "She called us sluts and she said that we were trailer trash and she said that we were doin' bigamy even though we're not." Patti held up her fingers. "That's three bad things she said." Patti grinned. It was a rather terrifying grin. "That's really super-bad so now we gotta do that to her, right?"

"You're right," Liz said. "I don't like to resort to that if we don't have to, but…"

"What? What is this, now? Are you two threatening me?" A metallic glint shone in Lenore's eyes. "Do you two intend to fight me for his hand? Is that it?"

"No no no no no," Liz said quickly, waving her hands. "We're not going to fight you. Actually, we're going to do exactly what you just asked us to."

Lenore blinked, confused. "Excuse me?"

"If you would like to go out on a date with Kid, then fine," Liz said, "you can go ahead and go out on a date with him. Patti and I aren't going to stop you or get in your way. We are now, officially, totally hands-off Kid. Completely hands-off," Liz said, raising her hands for emphasis.

Lenore stared at them. "Are you mocking me?"

"No, no!" Liz insisted. "Listen, if you want, you can even take him out on a date right now. Patti and I were just going to dump him off at home and go shopping because we were tired of dealing with his bullshit today anyway. So if you want to take him out on a date, tonight's your night. I really recommend that you take him out tonight, though, because it's probably going to be a while before he has any more free nights like this."

Lenore still glared at Liz and Patti suspiciously. "You are serious."

"Completely serious," Liz assured her. "Patti has a mirror in her pocket and you can call Kid back out here right now if you want to ask him out."

Patti pulled her small mirror with the giraffe stickers on it out of one of her enormous pockets. "Here you go!" she said, handing the mirror to a stunned Lenore.

Lenore took the mirror gingerly, as if expecting a trap. "You are only asking me to call the Lord Death right now because you are confident that he will reject me, aren't you," she said, still not dropping her guard. Her friends glared silently at Liz and Patti. The watching crowd around them murmured in anticipation of what was about to happen next.

"Nah, he's not going to say no to a date with you," Liz said with a shrug. "I told you, Patti and I don't care. We were going to ditch him today anyway. And he knows that we won't get jealous if he goes out on a date with somebody else. It's an open relationship."

"An open relationship?" Lenore seemed shocked at the idea. "You two have led the Lord Death even further down the path of debauchery than I thought. How revoltingly sinful." She sneered at Liz and Patti, then finally looked down at the mirror in her hand and began to dial with the tip of her finger.

Lenore's friends and the gathering crowd watched with silent, baited breath.

Lenore's sneer vanished and was replaced with a charming, pretty smile. Liz could hear Kid's voice as he answered the mirror. "Liz, you are completely wrong and I just double-checked fifty of these candelabras and they are not crooked at- Oh, you're not Liz."

"Lenore Van Rensselaer, Class Northstar," Lenore said. "Your partner has generously allowed me to borrow her mirror so that I may speak with you."

"Is this an emergency?" Kid asked, the alarm clear in his voice.

Lenore shook her head, her hair waving prettily as she did so. "Oh, no no no no no," she said. "I have heard that you were available this afternoon, so I would like to humbly request that you join me for a coffee and a trip to the cinemas afterwards. I would very much like to spend some time with you, Lord Death, although I assure you that my affections for you are chaste and pure and that you have nothing to fear in terms of me having ignoble intentions."

Silence from the mirror. Liz watched Lenore, silently. Liz was aware that most of the gathered crowd was watching her, silently.

Finally, everybody heard Kid's voice coming through the mirror. "Okay," he said. "That sounds like fun. Are you outside with Liz right now? I need to finish checking a few of these candelabras, and then I'll be right out. See you."

Liz saw the mirror in Lenore's hand go dark, signaling the end of the call. Lenore immediately grinned up at Liz triumphantly. The watching crowd gasped. Liz knew what they were all thinking. They were all thinking that they had just witnessed Liz and Patti being humiliated.

They couldn't have been more wrong. The fun hadn't even started yet.

Lenore was clearly relishing her illusion of victory. "It appears as if the Lord Death has not been so completely seduced by you two after all," she said, handing the mirror back to Patti and then triumphantly flipping another lock of hair over her shoulder.

"Duh. I told you that he doesn't care either way." Liz sighed and held out her hand. "Now give me your cell phone."

"Excuse me?"

"You do have a cell phone, don't you? You're going to need it. Now give it to me. I can't in good conscious let you go out on a date with Kid without being prepared." Liz still held out her hand impatiently. "Come on. I'm trying to help you."

Patti pulled her own cell phone out of her other enormous pocket. It, too, was decorated with giraffe stickers. "I got the numbers!" Patti said, handing the phone to Liz.

Liz took the phone from Patti, and showed it to Lenore. "Look," she said. "If you're not going to give me your phone, then here, take Patti's phone and make sure that you program these numbers into your speed dial. You'll need Kid's therapist, his psychiatrist, his lawyer – make sure you get the lawyer's Blackberry and his home phone too – our insurance agent, the fire department, the police department, and the FAA's Nevada hotline in case Kid acts like an idiot and takes Beelzebub into a no-fly zone again and you end up being chased by F-16s."

Lenore stared at Liz. "…What?"

"You are taking Kid out on a date, aren't you?" Liz snapped, impatiently. "You need to be prepared. I told you: Therapist, psychiatrist, lawyer's Blackberry, and lawyer's home phone should be the first four numbers on speed dial in your cell phone. You're definitely going to want the fire department and the police department on there as well. Our dates usually end with me having to call all of those numbers and fast. By the way, how good are you at hand-to-hand combat? Do you know how to disarm him if he comes after you – or somebody else – with a pair of eyebrow tweezers?"

"Didja wanna take him to Deathbucks before the movie?" Patti asked. "Uh-ohs. That's bad. You shouldn't do that."

"Yeah, Patti's right, that's a bad idea," Liz said. "Better to skip the coffee and go straight to the movie. It's better to keep him in dark places as much as possible because then at least he can't see people's eyebrows. Oh, by the way," Liz said, "he's already been banned from every movie theater in Death City and most of them in Carson City and Vegas as well. I'd recommend that you take Beelzebub and cross a couple state lines before you go into a movie theater with him. His reputation unfortunately precedes him in most places around here."

"An' you need to get to the movie super-early," Patti said, "so that he can sit in the exact center of all of the seats. If he can't sit in the exact center then bad bad bad things are gonna happen."

"Now listen," Liz said. "If he gets upset about his hair and tries to kill himself again-"

"Wait, WHAT?" Lenore gasped.

"Calm down, just listen to me," Liz said. "The minute that he throws himself on the ground and starts crying, you need to call his therapist right away. Therapist first, then psychiatrist. Don't try to deal with it yourself, you're an amateur. If he tries to crawl into a dumpster, that's okay, just let him go through with it and try to get the therapist on the phone so that he can talk Kid out of it."

"Unless," Patti said, "he tries to kill himself by crawlin' into one of those dumpsters where you push the button and it all goes crrrrrrrrrush-"

"Oh yeah, I remember that night," Liz said. "That was one of our better dates, actually. At least we didn't blow up the movie theater that night. I remember because he was trying to kill himself because he realized that his hair was parted slightly to the left and not because he was ashamed of having just destroyed the movie theater. Normally when he tries to kill himself at the end of a date it's because we just blew up the movie theater and he's beating himself up about it."

By this time, Lenore's jaw was hanging open. Her friends' jaws were hanging open. The gathering crowd was staring at Liz and Patti with utter awe written all over their faces.

Liz waved her hand in front of Lenore's face. "Hello? Earth to Lenore? If you're not going to program these numbers into your own phone, then here, just take ours." Liz forcefully placed her cell phone into Lenore's trembling hand. "You're going to need this."

Lenore folded her fingers around Liz's cell phone, her face still stunned and disbelieving. "You-"

"Hi, Lenore," Kid said. He had finally finished checking the candelabras in the third floor of the east wing of the school and was now standing at Liz's side. He glanced down at the cell phone in Lenore's hand. "Oh, good. I see that Liz has properly debriefed you about our dating safety measures."

"You kids have fun, now." Liz said, slapping Lenore on the shoulder.

"Bye-bye, Kid!" Patti said, waving enthusiastically. "Liz an' I are gonna be home tonight so you can bring Lenore over for a foursome if you want!"

Lenore flushed bright red, her face twisting with anger. "You filthy-"

"They're just joking," Kid said, taking Lenore's hand. "Patti knows that I don't do foursomes because there's no way for me to be in the center of three other people. We would need a fifth person to join us." Kid glanced down at Lenore's hand that he was holding. "Uh. Lenore. If I might ask, who else were you planning to ask out with me?"

"What do you mean, who else?" Lenore asked. "My Lord Death, I had hoped that just you and I might be able to spend some time getting to know-"

"What?" Kid said. His eyes widened with panic. "I can't walk all the way to Deathbucks with just you holding my right hand! Who's going to hold my left hand? And how could you ask me out to a movie if you aren't going to bring anybody to sit on the other side of me? I can't sit next to just one person in a movie theater – it would be asymmetrical!" Kid whirled his head from side to side, casting his panicked gaze over Lenore's watching friends. "Could one of you-?"

Lenore's friends ran away, terrified. Most of the crowd that had gathered to watch Liz and Patti's confrontation with Lenore also scrambled away as quickly as possible.

Liz and Patti stood aside, watching Lenore standing and blinking stupidly while Kid melted down, still holding her hand. "It's no good," Kid moaned, "it's no good, I'm such a failure, I can't even go out on a date with just one person-" He began to sink down to this knees, then suddenly froze, his eyes widening. He jumped back into a standing position and glanced over Liz's shoulder. "Hey, BLACK STAR!" he shouted.

Liz turned and saw Black Star and Tsubaki crossing the courtyard toward them. Apparently they had managed to miss all of the drama from moments before. "Yo, Kid!" Black Star said, waving. "What's up? Who's the chick?"

"BLACK STAR I NEED YOU TO GO OUT ON A DATE WITH ME!" Kid shouted, frantically. "COME HERE AND HOLD MY OTHER HAND!"

Black Star and Tsubaki froze. "What?" Black Star asked.

Patti clutched at her stomach and laughed. Liz turned to Black Star and said, "He needs you to save him. This is a matter of life and death."

"Oh-ho, so a god needs to beg the great Black Star for help?" Black Star said, grinning. "No problem! Saving puny people who are smaller and weaker than me is what the great Black Star does best!" Black Star strode over toward Kid and grabbed Kid's other hand. "Now where are we going and seriously, who's this chick?"

"This is Lenore, and we're going for coffee and a movie," Kid said, apparently much calmer now that he was finally in the center between two people with both of his hands being held. Then he finally stepped forward, and began walking away from Liz and Patti. Black Star strode happily alongside him while Lenore, an utterly shellshocked expression on her face, was dragged along behind them. "Come on," Kid said. "We have to hurry if we want to make an eight o'clock showing of any movie."

Liz and Patti watched the three of them walk away. Tsubaki tapped Liz on the shoulder. "What just happened?" she asked.

"Lenore happened," Liz said. "After tonight, she probably won't even happen again." Liz grinned. "Well, I'm glad that I gave her my cell phone. She's definitely going to need it tonight if they've got Black Star with them."

Patti laughed. "Movie theater's gonna bu~urn!" she sing-songed.

Liz laughed too, because she knew that there was at least a ninety percent chance of Lenore's date ending in fire. Or possibly worse.

This happened every now and then, especially with the younger, stupider, more arrogant little girls in the lower grades. That was all right, though. Patti and Liz had long ago developed a foolproof strategy for dealing with situations like this.

They merely allowed Kid to go out on a date with anybody who asked him for one.

Nobody ever, ever came back to ask Kid out for a second time.