Author's Note: My computer almost crashed during this week. Scary. I've got my files all backed up now! (To Google Drive. Does that count?)
Little notes about the story:
- Imagine that the choir room is on the fifth floor of the afterlife high school's music building.
- Brittany speaks entirely in song lyrics. Finding songs with specific words that more or less convey a particular message is really hard.
- To SamEvans17: I actually did start out writing this as a humorous story, so I'm glad some of the deaths made you chuckle! Actually, my writing process has been a lot like the seasonal progression of Glee: it began intending to be a humorous comedy, but eventually started taking itself too seriously and now it's just a strange, dramatic dramedy of drama. Yeah.
Other than the blood crusted all over his body, Ryder's totally okay. Though the holes torn through his shirt and jacket leave no doubt that he must have been pretty dead up until very recently.
This is the third time he's surfaced from unconsciousness today. It's also the third time he's been reaching for wisps of memory that float just out of reach.
"See?" Kitty says monotonously as she hops onto the piano that he's been gracelessly sprawled upon, breaking him out of his thoughts. She hands him a warm, wet towel. "You won't stay dead."
Ryder glances in confusion about the choir room. For all intents and purposes, it looks like a music room; the back half of the room is comprised of three platforms of increasing height. Instead of individual chairs on each platform, there's just one huge couch with at least three students, all wearing the same black uniform. The front half of the music room is occupied by the piano at one end, a drum set, some guitars, and a pile of speakers in the other, and a wide, open space in between, where Sam is currently standing.
"Sorry 'bout that," apologizes Sam. "Man, I always forget to tell people about that squeaky step!"
Ryder inspects his hole-ridden khaki suit jacket yet again as he uses Kitty's towel to wipe the blood off his chest. No excuse of not finding a scar on his forehead this time; the evidence of this death is pretty real. "Holy shit," he breathes. "I really did die that time."
Kitty glares at him. "If you didn't believe me the first time, I'll be glad to show you again."
Some sort of psychic force propels Ryder's butt to fly off the piano and into the nearest vacant spot, which happens to be the couch on the middle platform. However, he doesn't exactly time his landing right, so he ends up sitting on somebody else.
"Whoa there," a guy says, bracing his hands against Ryder's back. Ryder immediately tenses, his defensive reflexes reacting to this new guy in the same way they had reacted to Sam, but Kitty's trigger-happy finger is still hovering next to her gun and he doesn't want a repeat that ends with another bullet through his head. Obviously feeling Ryder's tense muscles, the guy continues, "Don't take her personally; Kitty shoots all the men who piss her off."
Ryder glares at Kitty. Kitty just smiles back.
"Well, Ryder, you've obviously met our fearless leader, Kitty," Sam interjects. "And that's our intel guy, Artie, behind you."
"He looks smart," Kitty adds, "But don't be fooled by the glasses. He's actually a moron."
"Dominatrix," Artie coughs not-too-subtly.
Any comeback Kitty might have had is cut off when the only door in the room explodes off its hinges, sails right into Sam, and smashes him into the floor as a larger-than-life blonde makes her grand entrance. Everybody in the room gets a clear under-skirt view of her hot pink ruffle lace underwear before she lowers her high-kick leg and strikes a proud pose. "I am Unicorn," she huffs.
"It's our band," a dark-haired guy wearing a bowtie adds helpfully from the couch above, offering his hand. "If Brittany could have it her way, she'd do everything herself, but we only just convinced her that we're sort of psychic extensions of her body, so hey, I'm Man-Brittany Anderson, the drummer." As they shake hands, Man-Brittany leans in close and whispers, "Call me Blaine when Awesome-Brittany's not around."
"Where them girls at, girls at?" Brittany sings. Strangely, even standing in one spot, Brittany is still moving, flowing, shifting gracefully from one dance move to another as if she's in a dark nightclub and not a roomful of students in broad daylight.
"What she means," Blaine translates, "Is that Lady-Brittany and Meow-Brittany aren't here. They're roommates."
Sam groggily pushes the door off his body and points at Brittany. "So… yeah. Meet our guerilla band, I Am Unicorn. Over there, the ninja sulking in the corner is Tina."
The Asian girl slumps down even further so that just the gleam of her eyes is barely visible above the dark scarf covering her face, glaring stormily at the couch people.
"That's Jake over there," Sam points out, and a tall mulatto waves at Ryder, a gigantic battle axe slung over one shoulder and sub-machine gun strapped over the other.
"Then we've got Kitty's man slave, Brody," Sam continues. "It takes about half an hour for a normal body to eject a ninja star from the forehead, so you've got about two seconds before—"
Brody's massively muscled body lands with a thump on the threshold of the open doorway, just barely blocked by Brittany's wiry frame. "Hey you!" he roars. "Princess! Prepare to die!"
He takes a step forward, reaching a hand forward to push Brittany aside so he can enter the room. Before he can lay a hand on her, though, a massive stone block swings like a hammer from the ceiling and smashes him through a glass window to land on his head on the concrete five floors below.
Jake, Artie, and Blaine rush over the closest window to view the gory details. "Ooo, that's gotta hurt," grimaces Artie.
Blaine, on the other hand, looks fairly enthusiastic. "How long do you think that's going to take him to recover from that one?"
"Holy shit," Ryder freaks, pointing at the huge stone hammer now blocking the doorway out. "Holy shit! What was… what was that?"
"Anti-Reaper defenses," Sam explains, hopping onto the couch arm next to Ryder. "You know, the people in the Death Eater costumes with the scythes who come regularly to reap our souls and stuff. They try to kill us, we kill them first, etc etc."
A beat of silence.
"So… if the 'grim reaper' hasn't gotten around to harvesting our souls yet..." Ryder sarcastically reasons with their own insane logic, "Does this mean we're not dead?"
BANG.
Ryder runs his hands through his hair, trying to cover up the burnt trench that Kitty's bullet had created as it skimmed the top of his head. "Whoa, whoa, whoa!" he backpedals.
"We're definitely dead," Kitty states flatly, her gun still smoking and still aimed at his head. "And so are you."
She fires again.