I very nearly forgot to post this. 8I
Anyways, this is the very, VERY last chapter of boring bantering and introduction before we get to the exciting stuff. The plot kicks up from here, thank goodness. I have to think of a way to pace the plot out well.
Just a warning, but school has started up for me and it's a lot more than I thought it would be, so next chapter might it be on time. I've used up my buffer, and I think it's cuz my chapters are too long. I might shorten them,,,
"Get off of me! Get off! Don't you fucking touch me!"
Brandi La Fenza is backed against the east library door, scrambling to evade the reach of several people trying to coax her out of her panic induced craze. Disheveled and incoherent to the words of anyone around her, she is defending herself with haphazard swings of her training scythe as she scrambles backwards constantly.
"Just calm down miss." One of the reapers closest to her raises his hands is a sign of peace. "You need medical attention-"
"Stay away from me!" She snaps before he can finish. The man is right; a vicious bite mark is bleeding copiously on her left shoulder and spattering against the previously immaculate floor with red, and the hand Brandi is desperately clamping against the wound is doing nothing to stem the flow. Her other hand is wielding the scythe, and despite the small size of the weapon itself, the blonde's irradiate movements are enough to fend off everyone trying to come in contact with her.
William infiltrates the crowd and the majority of reapers around him, being the very trainees he happens to be instructing at the time, part like the red sea. "That will be quite enough." He declares, not only to Brandi, but to the thick crowd of people drawn in by the screaming and overall commotion. "Those of you due in lecture room 444, please go there immediately as we will not be able to start lessons without any students."
As the mass of people disperse to where they are supposed to be, two last reapers join the fro. What is happening? Eve, having arrived only slightly early, watches the scenario with a detached expression.
"Isn't that...?" Ronald leans forward and squints one eye to get a better look at the crazy girl who is still yelling and ranting. "Brandi? It that her name?"
"So it is." Both of them know it is her. "For such a serious situation, you seem nonchalant. Why is that?"
"Well, if she's not dead yet, the trouble can't be that serious, can it?"
"Huh." Eve's eyes narrow to look over the entire blood-soaked portion of the room, and then at the girl currently screaming her head off. Apparently seeing something, however, the girl makes a choking noise before she can stop herself.
"Hmm? Is something that matter?" Ronald asks.
"No, it's nothing." The girl mumbles, before walking up to Brandi, and staring down at the slumped figure. "Well," She changes the subject, stretching her hands. "If we cannot begin lessons until this ends, I may as well take of her."
And so, completely disregarding the swinging scythe in the vicinity, Eve swoops down on the girl and takes out her own weapon, raising it and cracking it down, blunt end first, on Brandi's head. The blonde slumps over and the commotion dies down.
"Well that was instant." Ronald blinks, almost barely missing the moment, before shrugging and checking his wristwatch. "Suppose I should go then; my shift starting soon."
He does not stay long enough to see the last stragglers leave the library, or to watch Brandi be carried off to the infirmary, or to look at Eve grimacing with a scowl as she sees the mess of red spread all over the walls.
…..
The first thing Brandi asks for when she wakes up (and calms down, which takes much less time than before thanks to several sedatives that had been injected into her body) is a thick pile of books. It is not what she would usually request, that is for sure; another pillow for her delicate back, perhaps, or maybe a decent meal with not too much salt, but never a textbook. After all, she had used to think she had been smart enough without extra studying. Who needs it with an A average like her?
And yet, it is still the first thing on her mind when she sits up alone, bandaged, and aching all over in the infirmary. Is it because it had been the last thing on her mind before… that happened, or because she does not want the incident to happen? Or because she feels unsafe cannot think of anything else but to put up guards, and safety nets, around her in the form of knowledge?
Yes, probably. But she is not one to outright admit it.
So this is how she is right now, sitting up in bed, her nose practically pressed against the pages of "Advanced Writing Skills" as she pushes up those stupid old hand-me –down glasses and looks through every word with intense concentration.
She is so diligent in fact, that she does not notice when someone somehow magically materialized in a chair beside her bed. (And that is most likely the only reason.)
"I have to apologize for what I said earlier. It seems I was wrong about you."
Brandi snaps her book down and her head to the side and sees Eve is sitting right next to her. "You have quite a drive to improve after all. If you truly were the kind of person I thought you were, you would be wallowing in depression and self-pity right now." The creepy girl is not even turning her head to look at her; she is just peering at Brandi through her peripheral vision. The nerve.
Once she gets over the initial shock of, holy shit, some weirdo who had attacked her before had just materialized by her bedside, the blonde's trademark glare of contempt returns to her features. "What are you doing here?" Her tone is incredibly untrusting and nasty as her eyelids narrow in suspicion, because the fact that Eve is just sitting there, as if sneaking up beside an almost stranger is the most normal thing to do in the world, is too. Creepy. Seriously.
"Paying you a visit, of course." Eve still seems to refuse to look at Brandi but stares straight ahead. She bends her head down and pushes up her oddly tinted glasses and keeps talking, completely, or perhaps seemingly, oblivious to that other girl's hostility. "The theory is that you have been attacked by a demon, and there are plenty of people worrying about how one could have infiltrated the association. Because we were the last ones to see you, Mr. Knox, Miss Rorn, and I have already been asked questions. They are opening a case to investigate. Almost the entire class is very concerned for you, Miss La Fenza."
"... so are you here to grace me with your presence and shower me with your pity?" Brandi spits out. "Because if it is, you can-"
"You seem to be assuming that I actually have sympathy for you." Eve interrupts. "But I assure you, I have no such thing, and if I did, I would not waste it on you. I came to interrogate you."
Brandi shakes her head slowly in confusion."...Why?" What the fuck is she blathering on about?
"I need to confirm something." Comes the vague answer. "About the thing that attacked you."
Not exactly wanting to relive the past twelve hours, Brandi threatens, "And what if I refuse-"
"Well, if you do, than I can always cut you and view your cinematic record." Eve interrupts like she seems to be doing so a lot, but instead of becoming indignant, Brandi is more concerned about the training scythe the freak is now fingering. "But that would lead to scarring trauma for you and some rather awkward questions for me, so I suggest you cooperate."
With a wince and a growl, it occurs to the green-eyed girl how ruthless the other female is. "What do you want to know?" Her voice is low.
"How many people attacked you last night?"
"Just one."
"Did he overpower you easily?"
"Well, it's not like he gave me any bloody time to fight back." This answer comes in a scoff. "Would have been a different story if I had my hand on my scythe... wait, how did you know it was a guy?"
"What did he look like?" The other girl ignores Brandi's question, and keeps going. Said patient growls and bristles, but wanting to get the entire unpleasant encounter over with, she decides to simply give Eve what she wants.
"Red jacket, red hair. I didn't see his face."
"And he simply bit you?"
"Well, duh." Brandi scoffs, tugging the edge of her hospital gown to reveal the freshly changed bandages looped around her neck and shoulders. "No, he knocked me unconscious with a baseball bat!"
"Like a vampire?"
"...what?"
"Like a vampire." The red-streaked girl repeats. A heavy feeling soaks into the atmosphere, weighing it down on Brandi's shoulders and infecting her mind with a feeling of familiar nausea and fear. "Sucking your blood out until you fade away. Pinning you down and never letting you go. Taunting you for every weakness you had, every reason you couldn't get away from him-"
"What are you?" Hands shaking, and eyes widened with a slightly crazed glint, the blonde reaches out and grasps the other girl's shoulder. What the fuck is this girl doing, guessing her every thought? Who is she to read her mind like some textbook?! "What are you?"
"..." For a moment, Eve moves as if to leave, but at the last moment, leans back and makes a decision to answer. "Rather a bit like you." She responds curiously, and for a brief amount of time, their eyes meet and Brandi does not know what to feel.
The blonde's hand is shaken away and Eve leaves and the door swings shut behind her.
The moment Brandi thinks that she is out of earshot, her haughtiness and contempt seem to flow back, but less definite and solid feeling as before. "Whatever. Just leave me alone." She scoffs dismissively to return to her book. However, at remembering something the raven-haired girl had said earlier, she slaps it down on her lap to exclaim. "Wait a minute! You-" Before stopping short: she is only looking back to empty air. With mutters of "Freak, just a freak..." She gives up on the matter and returns to reading.
...
Eve leans against the closed door and mulls over the change she had just seen in the girl. I think I just saw someone become a bit like me. She acknowledges and she walks down the hall out of sight. I wonder what will happen to her.
Like it is used to doing, her train of thought takes an abrupt turn and shifts to the more urgent matter on hand. Her manner of walking becomes more fast-paced, more restless and urgent, as she thinks, so... what she saw confirms my suspicions.
He is dead.
No, he is supposed to be dead.
But still...
The man in red. A vision of a figure half-obscured in shadows and half-robed in crimson red occurs to her.
The wound itself. She thinks back to the bandages over Brandi's neck, and the bite wound.
And then the brand painted in blood. The design of intertwining crescent moons had been drawn as clear as day on the library wall.
It is him. She concludes. Eros Ashworth.
...Fuck.
And I was so sure I had killed him.
...
"Mister Spears, I would like to talk to you."
William is about to leave the lecture room, being almost done with his shift, when he is interrupted by one last curious student wanting answers. Glancing at the clock, he looks back to Eve. "Since it is still twenty-five minutes to five-thirty, you may, but I suggest you speak quickly."
The girl avoids eye contact with her superior to gaze out of the nearby window. "There will be an investigation of the attack on Miss Brandi La Fenza, will there not?"
"Yes."
"But no one who is not involved with the investigation is allowed to pry into the matter, are they?"
"That is correct." The opening to this conversation seems to be more out of formality than to actually satisfy the student's curiosity; as a triple A student, Eve should be more than familiar with details about special investigations. Such as the fact that William himself manages them...
"Then I would like to be a part of the investigation."
"Absolutely not." William shoots down the request without a trace of hesitation. "No trainee is near ready enough partake in an investigation of this nature."
"Is it possible for me to take all of the exams early?" The subject is now different yet still relevant. She is persistant.
"No."
There is a stagnant pause in the conversation as Eve tilts her head with a slight frown. "Why not?"
William goes into lecture-mode as he straightens his glasses with his death scythe. "If we were not so understaffed, each student would be given a private mentor with which they would be able to learn the curriculum at their own pace. However, as this is not the case, the branch has resorted to grouping larger numbers of students with only one or two instructors. We simply do not have the resources to make an early assessment possible; any reaper that has enough experience to do such a thing will most likely already has other duties."
"What if I find someone who can?"
"While I doubt anyone will agree work overtime, if you succeed in doing so, then yes, the proper paperwork can be filled out to allow you to take an early final exam."
"And I take it that asking you to mentor me will not be of any use?"
There is a flash of light reflecting on the lenses of glasses. "I am afraid not. I already have overtime as it is."
"I see. Thank you." Eve bows and leaves with no other sounds.
...
A mentor, is it? As she taps her feet while traversing down the halls, Eve shuffles through her options in her head. I do not know many people here, so the best thing to do is ask people I already know... which is not many people.
All of the other trainees are unlikely to know any options, but perhaps I can ask some of them tomorrow.
William cannot do it.
Grell is- ughghg. She shudders. Out of the question. Definitely.
So that leaves- hmm? While mindlessly making her to the library, the girl catches herself with her hands opening the doors to the wrong one she had intended. I went two floors too far down. She realizes, looking inside the crack to see the collection of cinematic records stored behind the doors. Oh. I should go back, then.
And yet, even as she starts to pull the handles back together, something catches the girl's eye that makes them widen as she flings the doors wide open.
No. She gapes. No way. No way in blazing-
Taking a running leap in the thing's direction, Eve crosses the room in one jump, and stares and stares and stares.
How in hell-
It is inevitably him; there is no doubt about it. Absolutely none.
Is that Undertaker?!
The answer to her question is yes, it is. Because standing tall and powerful in the center of her line of vision is a statue of a legendary grim reaper, the very spitting image, minus the hat and plus a pair of glasses and a scythe, of a mortician who now has a lot of questions to answer.
...
"Undertaker!" Eve roars indignantly as she practically kicks down the funeral home door, her foot still raised in a roundhouse kick by the time it is forced open. "Where are you?"
The mortician is, conveniently for him, nowhere in sight as the angry girl roots through every nook and cranny of the funeral home. He is not in any of his usual spots: sitting atop his desk, crouched behind the door, perched on one of his coffins, and definitely not (and Eve checked several times on this,) hanging upside-down by the knees from the dusty chandelier fastened to the ceiling.
So this leaves the insanity lurking behind the walls... The girl deduces, coming to the conclusion with a rather unhappy look on her face. Given what had happened the last time she delved further into the funeral home beyond the front lobby, she is not too eager to do so again. Or rather, behind that strange bookcase thing.
Sigh.
"Undertaker." She calls out, now what more jaded in tone than before. "Where aaaarrree you? Please do not tell me you are hiding on purpose. Please."
An eerie giggle that reverberates through the entire building is all the answer she needs.
Siiiiiggggghhhhh.
"Under-ehhh?" Eve's next lament is cut short in favour of a very confused noise. And with good reason too, because she does not know what she is looking at
Well... first of all, she knows she is in a bathroom. The sink, bottles, (which are standing on the ever-present shelves and some with every room in the mortician's home) and tub standing smack in the middle of the room is testament enough to that. But it is what is in the bathtub that really strikes her dumb. Not the bubbles, which, by the way, are freakishly large and pink for bubbles, that are floating on the surface of what Eve hopes is water and not embalming fluid, but what is lurking amid them.
Curling like aged rivers among the pink froth is what looks like a mass of grey tentacles that lead to a... body of some sort. As the tub is quite spacious, and the limbs are winding to and fro in the water, whatever is in there must be huge.
"Undertaker?" Eve sticks her head out the doorpost, now sounding very worried. "There's a... kraken... thing. In your tub. Ah, are you aware it's in there, because you should-"
"Heellllloooo, my lady~!" She is interrupted when the man she is looking for rises like a swamp monster out of the tub His hair, which had been floating on the surface this entire time, thankfully covers most of him as he sits up, though this does little to stop Eve from seeing parts of his torso peeking out from the strands and thinking, sweet heavens above, no.
Some inhuman squawk of heart tearing, gut wrenching terror makes its way halfway out of Eve's mouth before she can find her bearings and falls backwards, scrambling to look away and clutch her chest as she back up against the door, gasping frantically. When she is sure she can talk again without breaking into hyperventilation, the startled girl whips her head and breathes "What are you doing?"
The mortician calmly answers with a chirp, as he plucks a soap-soaked sponge from beside him and drags it across an equally bubbly arm. "Why, taking a bath! What else does it look like?"
"You're naked!"
"As people usually are when they are bathing." Undertaker snickers. "Why so flustered, my lady?"
"You're naked!" After twitching copiously, Eve finds the strength in her legs to stand up and dust herself off. "Just- just- fine. I should not have come in here, and I'm sorry. I'll just- talk you after you finish."
"Not quite!"
She is stopped even as she turns around, and Eve winces like she had been stabbed in the eyes, which she may as well had been. Slowly, deliberately, she turns around and tries not to burst into tears. "Yes?"
"Before you go, be a dear and get that towel for me, won't you?" Undertaker makes a wading motion to 'swim' to the edge of the bathtub, and leans over it like he always leans over things. He waves his soapy hand, for once without the jade ring that is perpetually on its ring finger, at a fluffy pink (of course it would be pink,) towel draped over a basin.
Eve stares. "Get if yourself." She scoffs incredulously. " You don't need me to reach a washcloth."
"Alright then, I'll have to get it myself." Undertaker starts to get out of the tub.
"On second thought you don't have to do that!" Eve nearly shouts, realizing what the action means. "I'll get the washcloth! I'll get the damn cloth! Just- just sit back down!"
"Suit yourself." The mortician laughs, just a little evilly, and does exactly what she asks. The water sloshes dangerously against the boundaries of the bathtub, but Eve is not too concerned because at the very least it covers the man.
Thank the Gods.
"Here." The girl grunts, roughly snatching the towel with one hand and shoving it into the mortician's direction, using her free arm to cover her eyes behind her sleeve. She wiggles the cloth expectantly in front of where Undertaker's face is supposed to be. "Hurry up and take it."
The man giggles maniacally, but for some reason does nothing else, and the sound of burbling is all Eve can hear.
"?" Peeking from the top of her sleeve, the girl looks in the tub's direction, wondering exactly what is taking him so long. She asks "What are you-"
As soon as the half-sentence leaves her mouth, Eve remembers what happened the last time she had asked such a thing, and immediately regrets even entering the room in the first place, because she knows something bad is about to happen, and that Undertaker had probably even planned it as well, and she is completely right, because before she can register it, two arms have grabbed her one and pulled her straight into the water.
It is cold. Colder than being stuck in a blizzard with nothing but a skimpy sexist outfit to keep you warm. Colder than being buried in a coffin of ice.
Alright, given that ice is literally frozen water, that last comparison is not entirely accurate, a corner of Eve's mind that is currently not screaming from the freezing temperature tells itself. But I am quite sure that the poetic portion of my mind already quite understands it.
While this is happening, however, and Eve's brain is effectively shorted out, her body thrashes uncontrollably, like a giant shark caught in a net, until somehow she succeeds in flopping herself over of the basin edge and falling rather inelegantly onto the ground, where she makes a wet splat.
When she finally gets her bearings again, Eve coughs icy water up her throat, wipes the hair from the vast majority of her face and splutters "What. Was that for?" In a very indignant matter, as she gets up for the second time in five minutes, now soaking wet and miserable.
Undertaker does not answer immediately, because he is too busy guffawing and chortling and laughing his head off, which, in his bouts and glee, momentarily lapse under the now lowered surface of the water, causing burbles to periodically rise from the freezing depths. "Ah, the things I'll do for a laugh..." He sighs when he finally finishes, wiping tears, of maybe just water, from the corner of his eyes.
Eve groans internally and decided to write off the incident as Undertaker just being Undertaker. "That better count as payment."
"Of course, of course."
...
After apparently drying himself off with a spare towel and getting dressed, Undertaker strolls down the stairs through the bookcase-door, carefully adjusting the string of funeral lockets that are almost always strung to his side. The girl, who had trudged down the same way about twenty minutes before, pouts as she sits on a coffin with a fist under her chin as she grumbles darkly. (Eve had refused the mortician's help in getting a cloth to dry herself, and declared that she would rather stay soaking wet than put any kind of trust in him again. Somehow he doubts her resolve will stay strong for long; one can catch a nasty cold this way.)
"Well then, my lady." He chirps happily, scooping up and urn of cookies as he strolls towards the lady in question, eventually lifting himself onto his desk. "What was it you wanted to talk about, again?" To punctuate this, he spins the cookie container on a finger, balancing it rather skillfully.
Not amused in the slightest, Eve turns her head and glares up at him. "You were a legendary grim reaper before retiring and you never told me."
...well, the lady certainly knows how to get to the point, Undertaker can give her that. No, 'guess what I learned today', no frivolous way of convincing him to admit the fact himself, and certainly no easy way for him to get off track to distract her from the matter at hand. His smile only freezes the slightest amount. "So I was. I never said I wasn't~"
"So," Eve sits up straighter and accentuates the casual word on her lips. "It means I can ask you for help."
"Is that so?" That is quite a feeble attempt of asking for aid if Undertaker ever heard one. He had gotten grown men on their knees begging for his information before, nobility and the scourge of the underworld itself, sometimes both, demanding his help. "But I hope you haven't forgotten you still owe me quite a bit. Surely one like you would clear your first debt before starting another one, no?"
"I have. In case you were not counting, and I know you weren't," Eve states. "That last one I paid when you so kindly decided I needed cooling off for no particular reason."
"Ah, but you seemed so stressed, I was only trying to help."
"Lies." Eve mutters. "You take every opportunity to bring me pains and you know it. And how did we get on this conversation again?"
"I don't know ~!"
"Right! Now back to the subject at hand!" Eve suddenly snaps, trying to get the conversation back on track as she slaps a fist onto an open hand, before pointing at Undertaker. "You were a legendary grim reaper before retiring and you never told me!"
Three dots seem to appear in the air one after another, between the two conversers, in an embarrassing, almost mocking manner.
The girl then realizes she had just repeated herself and her face starts reddening uncharacteristically as she buries her face into her palms with a sigh. Undertaker cannot help snicker; this is why he finds the girl so very amusing.
"But... ah, where was I... Right." Swaying ever so slightly, Eve mutters under her breath and tells Undertaker everything.
He does not particularly like what she is asking; he had left the dispatch with good reason, but for now, the mortician decides to humor the girl and give her a chance. "So, that's what you wanted to ask, eh?"
"Yes, like I didn't just finish explaining." Eve grumbles dejectedly. "Now will you do it or not?"
Undertaker strokes an imaginary beard is a wise fashion, putting on a show of considering the offer even though both of them know for sure what he is going to say next. "I'm not suuuuureee. Do you have the proper payment?"
...
"Oh. My Gods." Felicia gushes as she cuddles a collection of photos and then proceeds to show them to everyone in the lecture room. "Look at this bunny. Just look at it. LOOK AT ITS CUTENESS. Isn't that the most adorable bunny you've ever seen? I got to sneak a few pictures last weekend on a trip to the country. Look! There's one with a bunch of babies! Awwwwww!" She even rushes over to William as well and shoves it into his stern, spectacle wearing face. "Look, Mister Spears! They're so cute!"
William takes one look at the fluffy little rabbits frolicking about and generally doing adorable things such as hopping and cuddling and an inhuman noise escapes his throat before he can stop it, sounding a bit like "Uhahghahinghmnn." (It seems even he is not immune to the cuteness or bunnies.)
The Lolita redhead continues doing this, flitting around between desks and being met with proclamations of "They look so fuzzy!" and "I love that one's eyes!" until she hears a growl emitted at her left. Looking in the direction of the hostile sound, Felicia comes face to face with Eve, whose stomach had rumbled, seemingly at the picture at the rabbits.
One reaper looks at another as the sitting girl pauses from her lunch to cast her eyes on the redhead, a fork with a piece of meat impaled in its prongs hanging halfway to her wide open mouth. The meat looks suspiciously like a rabbit leg. "What?"
A look of absolute horror crosses Felicia's face and-
...
"BWAHAAHAHAHAHA! HAHAHA!" Undertaker bursts into peals upon peals of laughter, while Eve buries her face into her hands again and wonders if she can drown in the water still dripping off of her fingers. Of course she cannot, but at least she can try. And fail. Miserably.
This must be why Undertaker finds her so amusing, she cannot help but acknowledge with a great deal of chagrin; of all people, Eve is not one who the least bit enjoys being made a fool of, or, in fact, having anything to do with fools in any case whatsoever.
"So will you do it or not?" The girl gasps, getting very exasperated now, gritting her teeth from behind her palms. Her face seems to be twitching, and her nose, for some reason, tingles unpleasantly.
"How- hah- can I not?" The mortician plops down beside Eve and thumps her on the back repeatedly for some reason and she coughs a bit. "You gave veeerrry sufficient payment, how could I possibly say no?"
In response, the girl looks up and says "Good. So tomorrow we'll go- ah- ACHOO!" ...only to sneeze and violently sprout hot-red crackling flames from her nose.
Both people stare. "The hell-" Eve mutters. She does not get to finish, however, because she is then interrupted by a barrage of sneezes. "Gah CHOO WHAT-"
"My my," Undertaker giggles much too mischievously to make anyone comfortable. "Has staying soaked like that gotten you a coooollldd?" He teases, stretching out certain words to further the humiliation. "How sad. You reeeeaaalllly should have let me get a towel when I offered."
From the cover of her hands, Eve glares narrowly at the mortician. "Actually, being probably being molested and being sick, I think I'll take the latter option."
At this, Undertaker feigns completely unconvincing indignation and prudency by throwing his heavily clothed arms, and lurching off the desk to saunter towards the girl. "Whaaaaaat? You take me capable of such unsavory things? I merely asked if you wanted to be handed a towel, my lady; there was no mention of inappropriate touching of the sort!"
Slowly, and with the caution of someone attempting to disarm a bomb, Eve lowers arm and stares hard at the funeral director. "You- you weren't-"
"I am quite sure," He declares, putting his hands on his knees and crouching down until he is at eye level with Eve, a feat that she herself is not sure he really accomplished given is eyes are covered, "That I never mentioned anything other than giving you a towel."
This statement is quickly followed by uncontrollable jerking on Eve's part and uncontrollable laughter on Undertaker's.
...
"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE E!" A piercing squeal of excitement stabs through the generic din of the room, cracking windows and damaging the hearing of everyone in earshot, which, given the volume of the sound in question, is a great many number of deafened people and breaking panels of glass.
When she hears it, Brandi, who had fallen asleep at her desk not a few minutes before due to a lack of energy, startles awake and squawks inelegantly before smacking the floor with her face. The rest of the front of her body follows, hitting hard, and jarring recently healed wounds in a painful manner. "Arhghg. What the fuck!" She snaps, jolting upwards, now standing. Incredibly furious, she glares at Felicia, the redhead obviously the only one in the room even capable of uttering such a horrendous noise. (Unless Grell happens to be capable of it too; Brandi would not put it past the effeminate man, already able to reach notes he should not be allowed to. Ever.) There is a saying to let sleeping dogs lie, and the pigtailed blonde is self-admittedly one of the dogs you better let sleep, lest she wakes up grouchy and rips your throat out. As such, she grips Felicia by the upper arms and shakes the tinier girl vigorously, repeating with a feral growl, "What the fuck are you doing?! Goddamn noise you're making's gonna bring down the roof."
Felicia, still giddily half screaming, and now half laughing, does not take the shaking as a hint and instead grabs Brandi too and joins in the motion, increasing the rocking back and forth two fold. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" But she does not sound sorry at all, still sounding hysterically happy. "It's just that... did you hear the news?"
"Eh?" The shaking stops. Brandi stares down at the redhead dumbfounded. "What news." She is too tired to ask the question as if it were a question, and instead the sentence falls flat like Brandi had mere seconds earlier.
Beaming, Felicia's answer comes sounding extremely contented and bragging. "We're getting a lesson from a legendary Shinigami! William sempai convinced him, and he's gonna teach us a practical exercise!"
"Oi, have many times have I told you not to speak Japanese if you don't know the whole damn language?"
"You can't tell me what to do." The Lolita dressed girl turns away and pouts, puffing out her cheeks with air.
"Maybe," The girls get off track and start to banter about different subjects like they usually do... "But just Grell-"
"Just because I what~?"
Until Grell pops into the conversation, leaning forward until he is holding eye contact with Brandi. They are probably around the same height, but thanks to the ridiculously high candy cane heels the transvestite wears, Grell manages to be considerably taller- and therefore more intimidating/irritating.
Without missing a beat, Brandi continues as usual. "Just because you butcher languages like you enjoy doing to everything else, doesn't mean it's a good idea to actually dooooo iitttt. Also apparently we're getting a substitute teacher."
"Oh, really?" Adopting a bored and jaded expression on his face, Grell duly ignores the insult against his habit of butchering languages like he enjoys doing to everything else and concentrates on the second, albeit less interesting point of the conversation. "I've had plenty of those in my time. No fun at all~!"
"Well, we are doing a practical lesson." Felicia pipes up.
Not one to be easily impressed, Grell cocks his hips haughtily and crosses his arms. "Hmmmph. Probably more desk work, as if I could stand any more. A lady like me needs some vigorous exercise to keep in shape! Alas, my cries of attention are being so readily ignored. Unless... who is this substitute?"
The shorter redhead opens her mouth to tell her idol, and by the sheer delight on Felicia's face, Brandi in one instant she realizes who it is and how Grell is going to react and dives to stop her saying "Fuck no no no-!" but she is too late and Felicia squeals and just before Grell launches into one of his many 'poetic' speeches about the beauty of something he obsesses over, usually his own appearance, the blonde can fit in one more swear.
"SON OF A-"
...
"Undertaker." Eve says. "What-"
She points to the entire group of people, which includes Undertaker, herself, the rest of her class and the two mentors of aforementioned class William and Grell, which is assembled in a thick crowd surrounding her and the, now that Undertaker can no longer deny it, legendary Shinigami.
"Exactly-"
Then she holds up the long, thin, strip of cloth that for some reason pinned to the upper hem of her pants, along with many others, creating some kind of multi-limb, strange, and absolutely useless tail.
"Is this? CHOO!"
And finally, before sneezing, thankfully without setting her sleeve alight, the girl gestures to the edge of the roof of which everyone is standing on.
Undertaker, in response, giggles in his usual, infuriating way, and states, behind his hand to hide the apparent secret from the rest of the class, which happens to be thronged around them, "It's your practical portion of your exam, of course! And because Willu~~~~ offered to waive my overdue library fines if I also volunteered to teach a class, I decided, why not kill two birds with one stone, hmm? Besides," He grins as if he is an avid hunter talking about setting hunting dogs on a rabbit, "It's more fun this way, don't you think?"
This guy... Eve thinks, her mouth hanging open a bit, is really lazy, huh...
"So you're not going to do anything but set us against each other and see you wins?"
"Exactly!"
"You do realize this is probably doesn't concede-"
But before the reaper trainee can finish her sentence with "with the rules", Undertaker clears his throat in a way where you know one is vying for a crowd's attention, and waves a spindly hand in the air, making the class fall deathly silent almost instantly. This is a first; even William, with his icy glare and imminent threat of stabbing one in the face, which is a menace even Grell will concede to eventually, although that should not be too much of a surprise, given the high-heeled redhead's vanity, had difficulty controlling the reapers in training at first.
However, and this is a very big 'however', when it comes to Undertaker, every student in the immediate radius around him seems more than happy to comply to his every whims. (I wonder what would happen if he told them to jump off the roof...) It is probably his reputation as a prestigious reaper that keeps them in line, Eve decides to think.
"Today's lesson," The teacher-of-the-day starts, his silver-shining hair obstructing the view of his face as normal, which is just as well as he most likely has a horrifyingly mischievous glint in his expression at the moment, "is how to fight each other to the death."
Yes, it is most definitely only the reputation. "Now I'm not telling you to kill each other, far from that. Attached to each of you is a random number of strips of cloth. This is a representation of a dying human's cinematic record. The number of strips represents how strongly you cling to 'life'." His tone is surprisingly calm and ordinary sound, absent of all the sing-song tunes and creeping giggles that usually punctuate it. "Each of you will fight with your scythes in an attempt to harvest each other's records. You can travel across as many roofs as you like, but do be careful not to fall. Your injuries will hurt quite a bit, and I'm not quite used to treating... breathing things. Lose all of your reels, and you will join Willu and Miss Grell and I back at this roof here."
So at the same time, we are the 'hunter' and the 'prey'. And the combination of jumping on the rooftops and the potential of being attacked by several people at a time can stimulate performing a real reaping in London. Maybe Undertaker is much more sensible than I give him credit for.
But the moment she even thinks this, Undertaker grabs her by the shoulders, digs his nails in so she cannot squirm free, and presents her to every person on the rooftop like a wallflower being shoved into the limelight. Which she is. "And by the way, whoever takes the last record from her will receive any wish they want granted!" He smile is pure evil.
I take it back. He's a lunatic as usual.
Just as Eve frees herself from the sharp, iron grip, by having to pick off Undertaker's fingers one by one, as he seems rather adamant about letting her go, the worst thing possible happens, and Grell looks in her direction. "Waiiit." For the first time since actually starting to attend the class, the bi-hair colored reaper is almost recognized by the very man, for she refuses to call Grell a woman, who had earlier disemboweled her and attempted to murder her.
Thankfully, Undertaker takes this opportunity to declare the start of the competition, and Eve takes that as a chance to run to the nearest roof before everyone else makes the acknowledgement that their 'hunters' and 'prey' are right next to them.
Annnnd that's it for now! Next month: ass kickery! SO MUCH ASS KICKERY.
And yes, I purposely kept Grell and Eve apart until now. Because otherwise if they met they would pretty much automatically start fighting, so I saved that for next chapter. Grell gets his ass kicked. Off a building.
It's gonna be sweet.