Conviction

(This one may be a little boring. Bear with me. There was some particular character development I had to fit in before other things happened.)

When the sports car parked back in the lot behind the castle, Dr. Stein got out and headed straight for the door, leaving the students to follow after him and whisper amongst themselves. Nikki assured her brother for about the ninth time that she was fine and she wasn't terribly injured and occasionally swatted his hand away whenever he tried to get a good look at the burn. Odette said nothing to anyone. All her questions were answered already. She heard the roar of William's motorcycle as he pulled in, too. She didn't look at him. There wasn't anything to say. Again, she was a little bothered that he wouldn't take her with him. It certainly wasn't to protect her because he took Nikki. She sighed to herself, just thankful that he had actually come back to the school as instructed. Inside the castle they were met by Kian, Rachele, Tim and Katy who all looked on with confused or otherwise worried expressions and Katy dared to ask, "What's going on?"

"Get back to the ballroom or stay in your dorm," Stein said flatly as he passed.

Tim's eyes fell on Nikki's burned forehead and cheek. "Wait, what happened? How did—"

The brunette went to him and stood close as she talked quietly. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have gone out without you."

Tim lifted her chin up to get a better look at her injuries. "What did this?"

"I'll explain later—"

"She'll be fine, but I have to treat the burns. Get back to the ballroom," said Dr. Stein with more edge in his voice.

"Sir, she's my weapon and she's hurt. I want to come with her." Tim stepped forward.

Christian trotted closer as well. "And she's my sister."

"Everyone else has sixty seconds to get back to the ballroom before you're all suspended."

Rachele and Katy flinched at the doctor's foreign harsh tone before Kian turned both girls around and herded them back the way they had come. Odette and William slowly turned and started away as well.

"Not you two. You're in trouble. You're going to wait while I treat Nikki's wounds before I decide what I'm going to do with you."

William sighed heavily before trudging along after him. He took off his tie and stuffed it in the pocket of his dress pants. Odette walked alongside him. "What the hell did you do that pissed him off so bad?"

"Nothing!"

"How did Nikki get hurt?"

"The—Kishin mutt thing, it had acid saliva and it got on her blade and—"

"You partnered with Nikki in her weapon form?" Odette's brow wrinkled.

"I didn't have a choice, okay? The thing was blocking my bike, it would have chased us down if we had ran on foot, and I'm too heavy for her to use in my weapon form."

As they kept walking after Dr. Stein to the infirmary, Odette rolled her head a little and refused to look at him now. "If you hadn't gone out in the first place—"

"Yeah, I know, I f*cked up, Odette. But we were out there and I had to keep us from getting killed."

Nikki tried not to glance back at them over her shoulder, having been made to stay close to Dr. Stein. But now it seemed their argument was over—or at least postponed. They arrived at the infirmary where Nikki was instructed to sit on a cot as the doctor set out some bottles of fluids, a syringe and some gauze padding. Tim stood close to the cot and watched as Dr. Stein started to rinse the wounds. William stood back with his arms crossed and watched the instructor with sharp eyes. Something told him that, regarding their first actual resonance, this whole defense-against-black-blood-influence thing was not going to work. And Dr. Stein would hardly meet his eyes. Surely he was aware. He had to have felt something, too. Or seen something.

The female weapon sucked in a breath at the ointment applied to the burns on her forehead but held still. The doctor steadily continued. "You'll have some scarring. But I'll give you some cream to put on it every day to help it fade quicker. Maybe it won't be visible forever. If you're lucky." He glanced at William.

"Why the hell are you all over me about this? I'm sorry she got hurt, okay? But I didn't have a choice at that point. Aside from the fact that we went out, what would you have suggested I do?" he combatted.

"I would have suggested that you followed the rules and stayed on campus—"

"I said aside from that! In that situation, you're already there, doesn't matter how you got there now because this thing is drooling acid in front of you, what would you have done, Doc?"

"I wouldn't have tried to be a meister when I wasn't, that's for sure." Dr. Stein taped a patch of gauze to Nikki's forehead before tending to the smaller burn on her cheek.

William huffed. "Bullshit."

Odette sighed. "Just admit you were wrong."

"I will when I am wrong! I shouldn't have gone out, okay? But I wasn't going to stand there and let this thing rip us a new asshole, I had to do something and every one of you would have done the same!" he said in a raised voice though not quite yelling yet.

"It's true, Professor." Nikki spoke up, "There was no way we could have outran it on foot. And it was between us and the motorcycle. It was face it or be killed," she said quietly.

"Oh, I daresay you could have put your heads together to come up with a plan of distraction to get back to the bike," Dr. Stein said around a Q-tip that hung from the corner of his mouth before he used it to apply more ointment, "You were trying to be brave. You were trying to be heroes. And you were trying to snoop in the first place. Save it for someone more gullible."

William held a snarl that seemed frozen on his face now. Tim sighed and shifted his weight back and forth uncomfortably.

Nikki addressed him. "Tim, I'm sorry."

"Hey, what about me?!" Christian squeaked, "I thought you were dog meat!"

"Yes, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, okay? I shouldn't have gone out. Especially without my meister… Or letting you know." She barely dipped her chin a little.

"That's unlike you. Not to go out and get in trouble, but to do it without consideration to me or your brother. What were you thinking?" Tim's voice was soft and barely audible, how she could tell he was truly convicted by her close call.

She knew exactly what she was thinking. Nikki glanced at William subtly but said, "I wasn't thinking. It was stupid. I'm sorry."

Dr. Stein's green eyes met hers now and narrowed in such a way that made her think her glance wasn't quite subtle enough. She stared up at him. His eyes shifted to William then back to her. Damn it. It wasn't. Nikki swallowed and silently begged with the fluorescent light glinting from her two orbs of frosty blue back up at him. The doctor rolled his eyes and only went about patching the last of her burns. Nikki released a quiet sigh of relief.

The door came open and Miss Marie appeared in a navy blue evening gown, her one visible eye looking rather panicked and wild. "Is everyone okay?"

Dr. Stein didn't look at her and started to prepare the syringe. "Yeah. She has some minor acid burns. She'll be fine."

The blonde woman hurried in closer to have a look at Nikki, putting a hand on hers. "You weren't hurt anywhere else?"

"No, ma'am. I'm all right." Nikki avoided her eyes, afraid of giving anything else away to anyone else tonight.

"Shame on you for leaving campus. You know better." She sharply turned to William next. "Shame on all of you."

The student glanced from Odette to Christian and back to Marie. "You're looking at me."

"You're darn right I'm looking at you." She approached quickly, her white heels clicking on the hard floor and adding to this new intimidating air that no one had seen from her before. She stopped in front of him and looked up into his face with her hands on her hips. "You of all people, William, I would expect you to be smarter than this."

He blinked. "I—"

"Don't you dare try to make excuses to me! You are an adult! You are supposed to be a role model for the younger students of this academy!"

William caught a laugh in the back of his throat.

"You think that's funny?"

His face immediately straightened again.

"I'm very disappointed in you. Not only did you go against the rules of the academy, but because you did Nikki got injured."

Suddenly the adamant, defensive armor William was wearing before started to crumble and fall away. His shoulders drooped a little and he looked in her eye with something much less than aggression in his face.

"You both should feel terrible for allowing each other to be in danger, but you most of all, William." She shook her head at him. "You almost had me convinced that you had changed."

Odette watched his eyelids twitch in the oppression of a flinch before he looked away from her and to his feet instead. "I'm sorry," he said softly in an obviously injured tone.

"You should be. Apologize to Nikki."

He didn't look up. "… I'm sorry, Nikki."

Nikki was already looking at him but mainly to find where his belligerent argumentativeness had gone. It must be somewhere under Marie's sharp heels.

"I'll be putting your punishments together. All of you. Not you, Tim," She said in passing as she clicked on through the office to the back room.

Everyone's attention was now on William who still stared downward, a mere shell of who he was when he walked into the castle tonight. "Whoa," said Christian quietly, "she just mommed all over your ass, man."

William gave him a sharp glance laden with guilt before ducking away out the door without a word.

Dr. Stein pressed the needle into the bend of Nikki's arm and slowly pushed down on the plunger before drawing it out gently again. "Well, seeing as Miss Mjolnir will be handling your punishment, I advise you all to go to your dorms." He pushed his cart away to the back room where Marie had disappeared to. "Have a great evening."

Nikki hopped down off the cot and cautiously touched the patches on her face. Christian sighed. "Piss."

Tim looked to his weapon. "Did you find that monster or did it find you?"

She fingered through her shiny dark hair. "We were… on our way to Lord Death. He was in a big fight with someone or something further into the city. But the Kishin mutt cut us off."

Odette started to the door. "I would not be letting anyone else know about that."

Nikki looked between all of them as she followed Odette's lead. "Marie was pretty pissed… Stein seemed like he was, too."

Christian stayed close to his sister with Tim on her other side. "And she turned Willy into a puppy. Don't you wish he would hear you like that, Odette?"

She exhaled through her nose. "Boy, do I."