Dalton didn't come into class for two weeks, and in that time, a new student had temporarily taken over his seat, a bespectacled African girl named Sheva Alomar.
Apparently, earlier in the school year, she'd been attacked by a shark at the beach, but because of prosthetics laws, she wasn't allowed to get her missing arm replaced until she turned 18. Of course, that also meant she had to spend a long time in the hospital to recovery, and only now was she ready to go back into the world.
For some reason that he couldn't comprehend, Valentine felt the need to help her in some way, any way! He knew he could regenerate a missing arm within minutes, so the mere thought of only having the one made him do a secret project.
After getting her to admit how tall she was, Valentine set to work calculating out the proper measurements for her missing right arm, painstakingly working on the metal limb in secret, his ever-calculating mind already planning out how to get her alone in a way that wouldn't pin the blame on him. He had it all figured out, and the arm - which was Quinque Steel, his most easily accessed metal that wouldn't easily succumb to rust - was ready to be attached... He just needed to get ahold of her, like he'd planned out.
Sheva walked back home from school, tightly gripping the strap of her shoulder bag, which was the exact same one as that really cute girl that sat in front of her, the one with the sparkly silver hair and the tattoo's.
Sheva idly wondered why the girl had those tattoo's, she couldn't be old enough, even with parental permission... right? What was her name again?
So preoccupied with her thoughts, Sheva didn't realize she'd absent-mindedly taken a detour to avoid some sidewalk maintenance, passing into an open alley to head for the next street. The next thing she knew, she was being grabbed from behind by someone that had some sort of clinking and rattling metal bracelets on their arms. She couldn't scream fast enough as a gag went into her mouth and a syringe went into her neck.
Sheva's head hurt, and it felt like her mouth was full of cotton. She groggily opened one eye, then both, immediately realizing that her glasses had been removed and she could barely see.
"Good, you're awake."
With a gasp, Sheva turned her head to see the fuzzy outline of someone wearing white, seated on a chair in the corner of the room.
"You were attacked by a Ghoul, they tore off a chunk of what remained of your arm, so I fixed you up, figured you might... and please pardon the terrible pun, I thought you might need a hand."
The voice was hard to identify. It was certainly accented, but the way they spoke, slightly musical in the way their voiced flowed through the words, made it impossible to determine their gender. Sheva reached forward, only for the person to stand up and she caught a glint of blue eyes as they pressed something into her outstretched hand.
"I wasn't joking about giving you a hand. I'm an expert in the field of mechanics and robotics."
Sheva recognized that shape, it was her glasses. She quickly flicked them open and put them onto her face, bringing the person into full, proper focus...
It was the girl from her English class... The one with the silver hair and tattoos!
"How did you...?" Sheva couldn't understand, but the girl giggled slightly.
"I'm a bit of a tinkerer, I build things, I fix them... I happened to have a spare arm for an android I own, swapped out a couple parts, put a few new ones in, and voila, you now have a certified cybernetic right arm." The girl sat on the edge of her bed - she seemed to be in some sort of hospital room - and smiled at her. "My name's Valentine, you seem to remember me already, I just haven't told you my name."
"So you did this in a back alley? What, were you just carrying the arm with you or something?" Sheva asked with a raised eyebrow, then glanced over at her right side, realizing that Valentine had indeed given her a metal arm.
"Yeah, I was. What part of tinkerer didn't make sense?" Valentine giggled again. "I know a cybernetics expert, she can help you do the physiotherapy to get used to having your right arm again. I remember you said it was about six months ago that you were injured, so I don't really think that you'd have the muscle memory or fine motor function anymore."
"I think I'll be fine, I'm left handed anyway." Shevea flexed the fingers on her metal hand, then tested them all, one by one, going through the various movements and actions until she seemed to remember how to do things with it again. "See? It's easy, once it get's going."
"Well, you seem fine to me, I mean, I did the arm installation and the calibr..." Valentine started speaking, but suddenly trailed off, his cheeks turning pink as he averted his gaze, embarrassed by the look that Sheva was giving him.
"Why do you tinker?" Sheva suddenly asked after he'd fallen silent, which startled him and made him look back at her to find her smiling slightly in amusement.
"I... why do I..." Valentine stumbled through trying to speak, having been completely derailed by her unexpected question. "I just... Do. I don't really... I have... I just..." He was getting flustered, trying to put his short circuiting brain back into order again, but utterly failing.
"C'mere." Sheva shifted herself into a seated position, beckoning Valentine closer with a curl of her metal index finger. "Closer, like, really close."
Valentine hesitated for a moment, then shifted himself closer along the side of the bed, urged even further a few more times until Sheva reached out and grabbed him by surprise with her left hand and pulled him into a kiss, which unfortunately fried his entire mental capacity and stunned him into shocked silence, unable to even push her away or escape.
"It's okay, I just... wanted to reward you for saving me. I mean, I know I shouldn't, since we're both girls and I'm not sure if you're a lesbian or if you're bi, or pan..."
"I'm a boy."
Of all the things to reboot first and come out of his mouth, it had to be that. Valentine's mistake, however, turned the tables between them; He'd just kickstarted himself back to full capacity, while Sheva just froze, unable to immediately process what she'd just done.
"I... I'm gender fluid. I don't fulfill normal gender norms or behaviours, so I just... do both. I dress like a boy or a girl, it doesn't matter to me. I like to tinker, take stuff apart, figure out how it works... put it together, or build something from scratch. It's not a fixed gender role, so I just... feel comfortable doing it. My sisters play video games, work at a bar, and go surfing a lot. I build robots, machines and fix things, make them better..."
Valentine trailed off again, losing his train of thought as he noticed Sheva's metal fingers curling into the light blanket on her legs. She was about to say something.
"Did I... offend you?" Sheva spoke in barely above a whisper. "When I kissed you, I mean..."
"No." Valentine shook his head slightly to each side. "Like I said, I don't fit normal gender behaviour. It doesn't matter if someone's a boy or a girl, if I like them, I like them. It's not really complicated."
"What about that boy that was walking funny? The one that's scared of you and got mad at me for sitting behind you in English?" Sheva was referring to Dalton's first day back in class - Dalton was too ashamed to admit what happened, but they all knew he was already scared of Valentine - a few days earlier, when he'd argued with their teacher about the seating arrangements. He now sat across the room in the back corner because Valentine had suddenly stood up and pointedly shoved him back into another nearby desk with his knee between Dalton's legs and licked his lips with a very hungry grin on his face before telling him off.
"I don't..." Valentine paused for a moment. "I'm not exactly a normal person..."
"I figured that much out, y'know." Sheva replied, but Valentine shook his head.
"I mean I'm not human. I'm a special kind of Ghoul... Called a T-Ghoul." Valentine was trying not to scare her, since - at least in her mind anyway - she'd just survived being attacked by a Ghoul.
"You mean... Your last name that's been redacted from all your school stuff... You're a Darkwood."
"I take it you've seen my family's show?" Valentine knew about the camera crews that were often at their house, but he was rarely home during the hours that the crews were there - they knew he existed and that he had a job - so his appearances in the episodes were scarce, at best.
"Yeah, a few times. I've never seen you on the episodes though." Sheva was still nervously gripping the blanket, as if steeling herself for something in particular.
"I have a job, so by the time I get back home, the cameras are usually packing up to leave or they're already gone." Valentine explained. "So, can I ask you what's making you so nervous? Is it me being a T-Ghoul... or..."
Sheva finally gave up with her resistance, grabbing Valentine around the waist with her metal arm, while her flesh one slid around his back and gripped the back of his head, pulling him back into her embrace, immediately kissing him before he could resist - she figured that taking him by surprise was better than fighting against his potentially superior physique.
She felt his metal armour under his clothes, the numerous pouches on his belt were laden with various things, she could feel his hidden gun, and his hair, his lips, they were so soft, so perfect. She couldn't help herself, she was just so drawn to him like a magnet that it had taken almost all of her efforts to remain focused on their conversation, but she couldn't handle it anymore, she just wanted to kiss him, to love him, to hold him...
Yes! Yes, that was it! She loved him!