RandomAN: I watched spanish Art Attack! It's a talking palm tree! O-o
Many Thanks To: God of Cake, StromMusician, Seraphinit, Lucia Tsukiyomi-hime, Eien no Ajisai, TOOLAZYTOLOGON, Cloud Carnivore, bourgainville blossom, Guest x4, PoisonousDemon, Firehedgehog, Glaux Bryonia, Aliaissa, Guest, Furionknight, IvyUnderCover, KenziePerth, SilverRider09 x4
For All Your Reviews! *-*
Questions/ Notable Stuff:
bourgainville blossom: thank you! I dunno why but whenever I think about a scene a lot of stupid details suddenly spring up in my head. Sometimes they disturb me... but I'm glad you liked them :D
Eien no Ajisai: heya! Yes, the Earl's human form is by far my favourite. So you can expect im to run around as a human a lot in this fic!
PoisonousDemon: You wanted Sebastian and Ciel? Here they are!
Glaux Bryona: Hey there, thank you for the review! And sorry for not loggin in – next time I'll definitely log in when writing you a review (sometimes I'm just a lazy shit...) I'm happy you like mi fic. And yeah, Tyki and Allen are just stupid together:3 There'll be quite a bit of Ciel and Sebastian in this and here they come *arrow pointing and chapter* Oh and Undertaker isn't related to Allen in this (being a deathgod and all) but maybe I can use that idea somehow...hm...
Aliaissa: I'm happy that so many like RoadxAllen. And finally Ciel and Seba appear, even if they don't meet yet. And I'll try to make the meeting both awesome and awkward. Awesomely awkward! *throws skullshaped confetti* Thanks so much!(the french part,..I can read that! Five years of french classes finally make sense, wohoo)
Kenzie Perth: Having Grell not appear and keep him from the pleasure of meeting Tyki? Never!
SilverRider09: Thank you for the reviews! And yes, going through things is Tyki's Noah ability. Basically he can decide what he wants to touch. *highfivesyou*
Ok, this chapter took a (very, very long) while...sorry (And yes, I was really just being lazy). But on the bright side...Ciel and Sebatian entry! For all those who wanted to see them! ;D
Also: A dedication to Guest who gave me the 'eloped' idea! Thank you!
Chapter 5
Ashes to Ashes and Dumb to Dumb
...or how to Train your Butler
"Come on Tyki!"
"No."
"Come. On."
"Nope."
„Tyki, let's go."
„No way."
„Stop making a big deal out of this and move your ugly ass!"
„Nu-huh."
This rather fruitless discussion between Tyki and Allen had gone on for the last five minutes (ever since Allen had said the word 'Undertaker') and frankly, Allen was getting sick of it. All he wanted was to pay his long time acquaintance their promised visit, but apparently Tyki wanted to be difficult about it.
„Tyki, we promised to pay him a visit and so we will" he said sourly.
„Never ever." the Noah shot back automatically, before adding after some consideration "...and in case you forgot, it was your promise, not mine."
„Tyki, he will be expecting us both. So you will come along, otherwise we'd be rude and I don't do rude." Allen tried to be reasonable „And it's just a few houses away – the whole thing will take maybe twenty minutes at most! I don't get why you're making such a fuss over it!"
„I'm not going. Just no. And, again, it's your promise. So he'll expecting you. Not me or us, just you. I even told him I wouldn't come, remember?"
Okay, he had a point there. But still...
„But why not? Give me one proper reason please. Just one and you can stay here"
Now, there were a lot of reasons Tyki could have given. He could have said something like: 'Because he's creepy and weird and scary and I fear that I won't survive another meeting with both of you in one room'. Or even 'I don't want to go to a morgue. Because it's creepy and weird and scary and I fear that...' okay, he would be repeating himself there. Still, lots of reasons.
But to make it simple he only said: "I don't wanna."
"...that's all?" Allen asked, sounding thoroughly unimpressed.
"You said one reason. That was one reason and it really should be enough. We're on holiday, so why are you forcing me to visit your creeper friend? I'm not forcing you to visit my creepy family either!"
"He isn't - "
"Yes he is!"
"You don't even - "
"Yes I do!"
"Fine, then stay here!"
"No I wo- what?" Tyki blinked.
"I said fine. I'm not in the mood to argue about this anymore" Allen said somewhat testily.
"Wait, really?" the Noah couldn't quite believe it. This was probably the first proper argument that he had won. Winning felt awesome.
"Yes, but if you smoke in my room while I'm gone I'll stuff a cigarette down your throat."
"Noted" Tyki replied somewhat dryly, all too used to the customary threat.
(Later in the day he would wonder why every argument he had with Allen ended with the boy threatening him. Especially since the brat was sunshine and sparkles to pretty much everyone else. It couldn't merely be because they were enemies. Not when Allen was perfectly capable of forgetting this fact at any other time. There had to be a different reason and Tyki would put finding out this reason on his To-Do list. Right after getting the boy rid of his delusions.)
"I'll probably wander into town myself" the Noah informed the boy "Do some sightseeing, try some begging, trip some people." Go find books about mental problems. "The usual."
"Do what you want" Allen replied from next to the door, already dressed in his coat and ready to leave "Just be back before dinner, it's your time to pay."
"Since when are we talking turns?" Tyki called after the boy as he wandered out of the room.
"Since today!" the boy called back, suddenly sounding suspiciously cheerful again "See you at dinner!"
"Hey, I never a-" Tyki tried to argue, but the door had fallen closed and the boy was gone. "...greed to this..."
Silence.
…
…
…
„And my ass is far from ugly" the Noah decided to inform the now empty room out of sheer defiance to have the last word.
"So we didn't find them in Poland" Road's said and crossed out the country on the map. "They also don't seem to be in Spain..." she crossed out another country "...and Lulubell said that not even Tyki is stupid enough to go back to Portugal" she let her pen hover over the last country for a second, before putting it back down on the table without eliminating it.
She smiled up at Sheryl "But Uncle Tyki is pretty dumb, so maybe we should check that out anyway?"
"Whatever you want dear."
"Good!"
Road clapped her hands once, before jumping down from the table she had previously been lying on.
"The problem is" she continued in that sweet voice of hers "that they can change location pretty fast. And somehow Uncle Tyki was smart enough to remember that he shouldn't use his powers."
She pouted a little. Sheryl felt a shiver go down his spine.
"Daddy, do you think Millenie will give me some more Akuma?" she asked, tilting her head to the side cutely.
"Uhm..." Sheryl wasn't sure how to answer. On one hand, the Earl had already given them an extraordinary big number of Akumas to help them search. He probably wouldn't want to dispatch even more of them. But on the other hand he really couldn't say no to his daughter. Not when she was looking at him with those wide, begging, slightly psychotic eyes.
"I'll ask him" the man promised with a smile.
"Thank you Daddy!" Road exclaimed happily.
Happy was good.
Because, sadly, Sheryl had made his beloved daughter very unhappy some days ago.
And sometimes Road had temper tantrums when she was unhappy.
Of course everything was entirely his own fault. Because he had forgotten how delicate his cute, little Road could be and had accidentally said some very nasty stuff around her...
The Earl, the twins, Lulubell and Road had been right in the middle of dinner when the door suddenly burst open. In came a slightly panicked Sheryl, with tears in his eyes and a heartbroken expression on his face.
"Earl!" he wailed. "It's horrible!"
At first nobody reacted. Lulubell just shot the man a sidelong glance, the twins didn't even seem to have noticed his entry - too preoccupied with quarrelling over a piece of meat- and Road only gave a little wave in his direction before shifting her attention back to her food.
After a few more seconds of heartfelt wailing the Earl, who was currently in his rarely seen human form, finally turned towards the hysteric man. "Sheryl" he asked calmly, all to used to the other man's theatricals "what's wrong?"
"It's Tyki!" Sheryl sobbed and then followed it up with some hardly understandable gibberish about bars and poker and exorcists.
That, finally, got everyone's attention.
"Exorcists?" the Earl asked sharply "What happened to Tyki? Is he hurt?"
"No, worse!" Sheryl's sobbing got louder and Road had hopped out of her seat to give the man a comforting hug. "He has eloped!"
The rest of the clan stared at him in silence for a moment. Then the twins started snickering and Lulubell rolled her eyes.
"What makes you say that, daddy?" Road asked delicately, worried for her father's sanity. The man had always been a bit weird when it came to his brother.
"Be- because I followed him there and the exorcist girl the other too and...and then he and Tyki ...they...and then they ran away together!"
"So, Tyki...eloped with an exorcist girl?" the Earl questioned, trying to make sense of the other's rant.
"No" unsurprisingly it was Road that corrected him. She was always one of the few that seemed to understand how Sheryl's mind worked. "I think what he is saying is that he followed Tyki to a bar where he was playing poker with an exorcist. And that the exorcist was being followed by the exorcist girl and they had a fight and then Tyki and the exorcist...eloped."
The Earl and Sheryl looked at Road, impressed with her ability to interpret nonsense. The girl, however, had an unusually vacant look on her face as she stared at her adoptive father.
"Is that what happened?" the Earl turned to Sheryl.
"Yes."
"Aha." the head of the Noah could feel a headache coming. He rather doubted that Tyki had eloped. The guy probably just ran away to avoid trouble. It wasn't as if Adam wasn't aware of Tyki's street life tendencies. Still, that there was an exorcist who would tag along with this nonsense was unexpected to say the least.
"Ne, Daddy~?" Road's voice chimed through there room. There was an odd edge to it.
"Yes my dear?" the man looked at his daughter, snot still running from his nose.
"Was the exorcist he ran away with maybe Allen Walker?" she asked a little bit too sweetly.
Sheryl suddenly felt really uncomfortable and another bout of tears sprang to his eyes. What then occurred was some more melodramatic wailing and apologies for his paedophile of a brother.
So, yes, in retrospect Sheryl could have handled that better.
A lot better.
None of the other Noahs had been very amused with the news. Tyki running away (with Allen Walker of all people) had them all very worried. Okay, the twins had been laughing rather loudly, Lulubell had ignored him and the Earl had said something about headaches. But Sheryl was sure that on the inside they were all very worried.
Road definitely was.
After finding out that yes, her Uncle had indeed run away with her crush, she had started giggling. And then she hadn't stopped giggling for the next five minutes.
Sheryl had to admit that if she hadn't been such an absolute cutie it would have been slightly creepy.
After that she had promptly pounced on the Earl, demanded some Akumas and put herself in charge of the searching party. Because apparently there was a searching party. And everyone was in it, if they wanted or not.
'Still' Sheryl thought fondly as he watched his daughter hop through the room, twirling Lero and rambling about new search-strategies 'It's so adorable how much she is trying to find her beloved Uncle again.'
It was Tuesday when another letter from the Queen arrived.
Ciel's day had started as usual. Wake up at seven, breakfast at seven thirty, violin lessons at eight, followed by going through the first part of his daily paperwork until lunch. Of course that also included the usual mayhem of uprooted tress, broken porcelain and the illogical and absolutely unnecessary usage of flame-throwers in the kitchen. But dealing with these sort of things was something he gladly left to Sebastian.
Going through the monthly reports of his toy factory was something Ciel secretly enjoyed. Not only was the success of the Funtom Company the only official means of representation that the Phantom family had in the business world -as their other job was a secret only known to a select few- but Ciel also felt emotionally attached to it. Unlike his role as a watchdog, being the president of a toy company didn't force him to make morally questionable decisions or to remember things better left forgotten. If anything, the company made him recall the happier days of his childhood, the time when he himself still played with toys instead of lives and he didn't yet know that his family main line of work meant getting rid of shady individuals. And well, it was also nice to have written proof that he was a pretty capable business man despite his mere twelve years.
So he was sitting behind his desk, scanning the newest report and contemplating which smirk would best deliver the message of 'my business runs better than yours' to the Duke of Rochester upon their next meeting, when it knocked on the door.
"Yes?" Ciel called out, watching the door open and Sebastian stepping through, in his hands a manilla folder.
"My Lord" the demon greeted with the customary bow "a letter arrived".
It wasn't necessary to mention that said letter had been send by the queen, as otherwise Sebastian wouldn't have disturbed Ciel in the middle of work.
"I understand. Did you open it yet?" the young Lord questioned.
Ever since a business rival had tried poisoning him by sending him a letter filled with Anthrax, Ciel had become more cautious. After all, once infected with Anthrax, there wasn't much even a doctor could do to help and he didn't fancy dying a slow and painful death. The only reason he had survived back then was simply sheer, dumb luck. After receiving the letter he hadn't opened it immediately, which in turn gave one of Snake's...snakes the time to detected a 'weird' scent from the paper. Sebastian had been on an errand at that time, but once returned, Snake had told the man about his findings and Sebastian had swiftly taken care of the problem (would-be murderer included).
Still, point was, that Ciel knew full well just how close he had come to being a murder victim. And he wasn't amused. At all.
Luckily he had his own house-demon, who was virtually immune to human poisons and could be trusted with sensible documents.
"Yes, of course. The letter is safe and seems legit" the butler responded "More than that, it includes information I believe you will find yourself quite interested in."
Ciel frowned, his visible eye narrowing at his butler. "Such as?"
"Maybe you should read it for yourself?" the butler suggested with one of his trademark smirks.
Ciel felt like hitting him.
Why, you might ask? Well, the thing with Sebastian was, that he was a rather rebellious demon. Sure, he followed his orders, completed each mission perfectly and his outward behaviour was excellent. But the problem was his mindset. Sebastian, being the powerful, immortal demon that he was, liked to think himself superior to everyone else.
Which he probably was.
But while Ciel could see his point – yes, even he could admit that his butler had abilities far beyond any human's – he wouldn't let Sebastian get away with showing it so blatantly all the time.
It was in the way he walked, talked and breathed. Absolutely everything about him him screamed: 'I'm better than you and you know it'. Even that smirk. Most especially that smirk.
Now, Ciel wasn't a hypocrite. He knew full well that he himself liked to lord his superiority over others as well. But he was a Lord so that really was to be expected. Sebastian, though, was a butler - a servant - and should damn well behave like one.
But the young Phantomhive wasn't stupid. He knew that he couldn't simply tell Sebastian to stop this behaviour, after all it wasn't so much what he did as it was how he did it. Ciel even suspected, that acknowledging the problem in this manner, would make it worse and Sebastian's ego grow.
So, as much as the boy hated it, there was probably no easy and fast way to stop Sebastian from being a smug ass.
So his solution?
Conditioning.
It was easy. Whenever his butler behaved especially arrogant, Ciel would make sure that something annoying would happen to him in return. And if there was one thing that annoyed Sebastian beyond believe, it was human stupidity.
So maybe the unbelievable clumsiness and resistance to learning that all servants of the Phantomhive household seemed to possess...were not really all that unbelievable after all. Because maybe Ciel had let it slip to Maylene that Sebastian secretly thought clumsy girls are cute. And maybe he had given some overgrown roots an unhappy glance when he knew full well Finny was watching him. And possibly he had also given his cook the permission to continue using his flame-thrower and other war utensils in the kitchen - under the condition that he never revealed this to the head-butler of course.
Yes, conditioning.
Things he did to properly train his butler.
And not to satisfy his vindictive streak or anything.
He wasn't that childish.
Even though he had to admit that slipping Grell their address and a map of the house with Sebastian's room circled in red might have been a little bit much. But really just a little.
With a small sigh Ciel forcefully shook off this particular train of thought. Now wasn't the time to dwell on such matters. There were more important things to discuss, namely the content of the Queen's newest letter.
Swiftly, the boy cleaned his business documents away in order to to make some space on his table and watched Sebastian place the folder down in front of him.
It was a surprisingly thick folder, at least thicker than usual, but with the usual blank surface with no receiver or sender written on it. The only thing that marked it as royal letter was the still perfectly intact wax stamp sealing it close. Part of him wondered how Sebastian had checked the letter without ruining the seal but the bigger part knew that it really didn't matter eventually.
Inside the folder was the usual letter, And photos. Six of them.
Knowing how useful it was to get an unbiased first impression, Ciel decided to first look at the photos before reading the letter.
They were curious to say the least.
Four of the photos showed pretty much the same thing, namely a pile of ash. Judging from the surrounding locations it was probably four different piles of ashes, still the photos were mostly the same. Ciel tried to make out anything specific about them, but all he could conclude was that three of them seemed to have been made in urban surroundings – judging from the brickwork and cobblestone– and one on footpath that looked rural.
The fifth picture was a little more interesting as it showed something that had been drawn on a church door. It was a stylized cross with with something resembling a flower or a sun in the middle of it, making it look like rays were radiating outward. There were also some signs and decorations edged into it. A Rose Cross. Ciel had never seen this particular version of the Rose Cross, but he knew that there were near endless versions of religious signs out there, so that really wasn't surprising.
The sixth picture was a completely different story.
There was a pentagram.
That was the first thing Ciel noticed. The pentagram had been haggardly drawn on the floor with blood. Below the star there two other, smaller markings, one of them looking like the number three and the other like a like a little cross or maybe an X.
What if it was them?
The young Phantomhive was so transfixed on the bloody markings, that took him nearly five seconds to even notice the corpse next to it.
The corpse was that of a man in his thirties, with average looks and average clothes and a deep, bloody cut on his neck. There was blood all over his clothes, the floor and his fingers. The pockets of his coat and trousers seemed to have been turned inside out and Ciel's first suspicion was a robbery that turned into murder. Possibly because the man had fought back, even if the photo didn't let him make out any of the typical signs of a struggle. Judging from the way he was positioned and how the blood on his fingertips was smeared, it looked like the man had used his last breath to draw the signs next to him.
Ciel looked over all of the pictures again, trying to find out what might connect all of them. Religion? A cult? Maybe the ashes were human remains and had something to do with the tradition of burning witches on a stake? The pentagram...Satanism?
What if it was them?
With a sigh he finally put the pictures away and grabbed the handwritten letter. He had enough of a first impression, the next step was gaining some real intel.
Usual was that the Queen's actual letter was far too short for his liking (not that he would ever tell her that) and was phrased in a way that made it sound like she was only inviting him over to tea instead of asking him to investigate a murder. Unusual was everything else.
My Dear Boy,
It looks like something is running afoul in London. People have been disappearing without a trace and a gentleman that has been seen in the areas has been found dead in an alley, robbed of everything but photos of ashes. The circumstances are riddling me and I'd love to know the meaning of is dying message.
He was staying in a certain church near my Station, but as usual the clergy's primary loyalty makes them tight-lipped.
The kingdom is informed about the existence of the Order, but sadly we are being told very little about its activities. It has to be noted however, that people disappear a lot in its vicinity and that its reach is further than even mine. London has never been a priority to them, but things seem to have changed in the last years.
Don't overexert yourself and look out for your health.
Victoria
PS: You are hereby also invited to my garden party next week. Your invitation has been send to your aunt.
Below the writing there was a stamp of the English version of the Kingdom's coat of arms. Very unusual.
The whole damn letter.
And Ciel really didn't like what he was reading.
"Sebastian."
"Yes my Lord?"
"Pack my things. We are going to London."
"Of course my Lord" Cue smirk.
"And bring the servants along."
Dadadum...Seba, Ciel and Noahs! Everyone happy now? :D
And does anyone want to try and riddle out the Queen's letter? I tried to give some information between the lines :D
Next chapter I'll reveal what bothered Ciel about this letter, but I'd like to hear your guesses first.
And why the hell is the chap so serious? This is supposed to be comedy, damn it!