Skulduggery – Crow

Anton – Bear

Ghastly – Panda

Dexter – Wolf

Saracen – Weasel

Erskine – Snake

Chapter 23

With the Christmas party in the process of being organised, and her birthday in just a few months, the summer had fallen upon them and with it, letters from her clubs and school for her 'parent/guardian'. She opened them when she got to her room from a case. Her reflection had done her homework already since it was almost midnight, and the letters had been left on the table.

The one from school told them about a nationwide competition 'Stephanie' had been picked to participate in for the school swim group. A second letter told them about an event herself and two 'parents/guardians' were invited to as a reward her for her learning over the year. It was just a bowling trip though so Valkyrie put it in the bin as no one would be interested except maybe Tanith, and that was a long shot.

The one from dance was about another competition, although this one was in England and the dance studio had been specifically invited after their last young-teen group had won the Irish championship the year previous. She was already a part of that group but she hadn't expected to be selected for any competitions.

She left them until morning but when the June light started filtering through her curtains, she heard her phone vibrating. Sitting up quickly, she wrestled with the covers and picked up the phone. Nadia.

"Hey sweet," she said huskily, grabbing the cup on the bedside and drinking from it.

"Good morning lazy butt. How are you?" Nadia said.

"Grand, grand. Tired. What are you doing? It's only – it's not even seven."

"Mum just got me up for school. Sorry, I was listening to the radio and they were speaking about a dance competition in England and your dance teacher, at least I think it's the same one, did an interview about it."

"Oh, yeah," Valkyrie said, getting out of bed. She found the letters. "It's in a month's time. They invited me."

"Are you going to go?"

Valkyrie thought about it. "I mean, do you really want to see me get dressed up and stretch my legs on stage?" She asked. "I think I might go."

Nadia laughed. "Are you asking me to watch you dance? I'd love to go."

"Let me see what they want me to do first. If it's rubbish, I'm not doing it."

They laughed, and Valkyrie took the phone downstairs, and the letters, and found Crow with his newspaper ready for the day. "Here." She said goodbye to Nadia and she sat down in front of Crow just as he finished reading the second letter.

"This sounds exciting," he said. "Do you want to do it?"

"Yeah, but I'll need to train more," she said, not too sure about that part.

"Valkyrie, we have our whole lives to solve crime, you might as well compete while you can."

And that's how Valkyrie got herself into a dancing and swimming competition. Her schedule was reorganised and because of that, she was out of work. Without work, she had to go to school for the last few weeks too. Between the classes, it was just practice, practice, practice.

On the week of the swimming competition, Valkyrie was dropped off at six in the morning at school for her swim practice. She got herself into her swimwear and joined the other competitors from her school, two boys, and the three did their stretches. Their instructor came in and grinned at them, far too happy in the mornings.

"Good morning kids!" He said, white teeth sparkling in the yellowy lights. "The comps almost here so you better be even faster than last Friday."

Valkyrie nodded sadly. Tanith was in one hundred percent trainer mode, and Wolf and Crow were helping too. She had spent the weekend running, weight training, wrestling, swimming lengths, doing assault courses underwater, holding her breath, absolutely anything that would give her more muscle, more strengths to do it faster than the others. Since her division was all speed, she had been put through the paces. The only thing that made her go through it what they said was the encouragement she got from Nadia over the phone before they fell asleep.

"Good to see your enthusiasm Edgley. What about you Smith?" Mr Swansy asked. Smith nodded. Valkyrie was pretty sure his parents were bribing him to do this. "O'Conner?"

He gave them another pep talk, though he wasn't very good at them, and started by having them swim a few laps and they did so nicely. They then did their real work – trying to get up and back down the lengths as fast as they all could. Valkyrie came first every time out of the three of them, being the same height as the boys and likely had more muscle mass than them giving her more of an edge, even despite their teenage testosterone bulking them up. Mr Swansy timed them, pushed them to keep up with him running down the pool, shouting for them to go faster. It was tough work but when they were all exhausted beyond working any more, they were congratulated for their 'excellent efforts' and sent to change.

Going to the girl's locker, still alone, she got her phone out and called Nadia as she did every morning.

"Hey Val," Nadia said quietly. She was hiding from her parents as usual. "I can hear you breathing."

"I'm out of breath, sorry," she said. She sat down for a moment and took a long drink. "How are you?"

"I'm fine," Nadia said. "Excited actually. Mum said we could get together over the summer. Without the excuse of school, she can't stop us."

Valkyrie grinned. "I'm glad. I've been missing you."

"I'll let you get your shower."

"Thanks. I'll talk to you tonight?"

"Always. Have a nice day!"

School was dull as usual, the insensate teachers blabbing about things Valkyrie was way ahead of in her own studies with her brothers.

"Stephanie, do you know the answer?" The teacher asked.

She hadn't been listening. Oops. Distracted by thoughts of Nadia. "Could you ask it again?"

"If you'd been listening I wouldn't have to," she said mockingly. "I asked if you could tell us something about Othello from the first three chapters?"

"He's presented as an honourable military man as to trick the audience into thinking he can do no wrong and making his downfall more painful."

"More about his personality Stephanie," she asked. Valkyrie could see she had a tick – her finger would twitch a little when she got irritated. "His personality."

Valkyrie gave her an annoyed look back. "He likes doing little girls."

.*****.

"Stephanie," Ghastly sighed, coming into the headmaster's office. They couldn't risk Crow coming in. "I hope she hasn't done anything awful."

Anton came in after, the two men sitting either side of her. She saw the headmaster shrink a little in his chair. He was certainly scared of Bear and more than a little put off by Panda's scarred face.

"Er, I'm afraid Miss Edgley, your Ward…?" He started questioningly, looking between the two men.

"We are her guardian's brothers," Panda explained. "I'm her guardian in the event her current one dies, though. He sent us in his place as he is quite absorbed in his current case."

"Current case?" The headmaster asked nervously.

"He's a specialist military and secretive case detective," Panda lied easily. "Stephanie has shown a great interest in following in his footsteps. I hope her education is challenging her enough for her to do that."

"Yes, yes, that is why she is here," he said, sitting up a little and shuffling some papers that had nothing to do with them. "Today, Stephanie caused a bit of a disturbance in class."

"How so?"

"Her teacher sent her to me and explained that she had been inattentive all lesson, then caused an argument with her teacher as well as using crude and disturbing language." He glanced at Bear then looked back at Panda with growing unease. "I wished to speak with you about the content she may be being exposed to that is making her talk about such things in the middle of class."

"What was the argument?" Bear asked deeply.

"She–"

"I didn't ask you," he said, looking at Valkyrie. She tried not to smile at him. "Tell me what you did."

"She asked me to explain Othello, so I did, and she rephrased her question to make me wrong despite the fact I had actually answered her question. She only did it because she was annoyed I hadn't been listening the first time around. She asked me about what we learn about Othello's personality at the start of the book, and I was annoyed she changed the question, so, I told her we learnt he likes little girls. Which isn't wrong even if I was being a little snarky."

"Okay," Bear said slowly, raising an eyebrow.

"And she said I was wrong! She tried telling me Othello is in love and so is whoever-her-face-is, and I said he was a paedophile and she got upset and started trying to get me to see her way, but I didn't because she's wrong. So, I told her she's trying to convince underage girls that marrying old men is a good and romantic idea, she said she wasn't, I told her she was because she was trying to romanticise Othello who is literally meant to be in his forties and the girl is, like, twelve. I never raised my voice, but she started shouting at me, grabbed my arm and tried pulling me out if the room. I told her to stop because it was hurting me, but she yanked me. I pulled my arm away and she held on and tripped over. She started screaming really loudly I'd pushed her, and the rest of the class even told her I hadn't, but she stormed off and I followed her here after getting my stuff without her even telling me to. Now I'm here and so are you."

Her acting-parents nodded. "I don't think it is appropriate that the teacher tell my Ward she should be romanticising a relationship such as the one in Othello to young women as young as Stephanie, especially to the point of getting into an argument about it in class. Your employee is advertising destructive, manipulative and abusive relationships," Panda said calmly. "I certainly see a few areas in Stephanie's story she could have made better decisions, but your teacher seems to have acted out of place as well, more so given she physically touched my godchild."

The headmaster was getting sweaty. "Err, I didn't know the full story until now. Stephanie, are you sure you weren't trying to antagonise your teacher?"

"She called me racist for not thinking child marriage was romantic," she said, glaring at the pathetically weak man. "I didn't even say anything about his race at all, I said he was a paedophile. Technically, that probably makes her racist for thinking I was being racist for saying he was a paedophile. If you think about it."

Bear shook his head, and Panda took a deep breath. Panda continued speaking: "I think Stephanie has been picked on by not only her teacher but by yourself also. I can't imagine it's normal practice to have a student sent to your office only to not ask for their perspective, surely."

"Sir, that's not the case at all. I'm sorry if it looks like that as obviously I was not told all the details before I called you," he said. There were sweat marks forming beneath his pits. "Stephanie, I will follow up with Mrs Vallendor about her forcing you from your chair, however, some of your words could be quite upsetting to your peers."

"I understand."

"And I can't be certain I can take you on your word about her putting her hands on you until I've spoken to the rest of your class–"

"I have scratch marks on my arm."

She was told to show the scratch marks and Valkyrie did. The teacher's nails had scraped her arms when she was being pulled up. That turned Panda onto full on angry Karen and Valkyrie sat back while he started shouting about how she had been attacked at the school and wanting to pull her right then.

It took a lot of convincing but soon Panda was settled by the headmaster and Panda accepted he couldn't legally pull Valkyrie from school as he was not her parent even if he had been sent in Crow's place. It was decided Valkyrie shouldn't be going to her literature lessons for the remainder of the year but would continue with her other lessons for then. It took some time to sort out and Valkyrie was honestly impressed Ghastly was able to find some many ways to say how angry he was without repeating himself.

By then it was the end of the school day so the headmaster walked them out the office to find the other Dead Men and Tanith, bar Crow who had to stay hidden, all in the waiting area for them. It would be more than strange to have a covered up man on the school grounds so he just couldn't come. "Tanith!"

"Stephanie!" She said back, hugging her. "Aww, such a little troublemaker!"

"I'm almost taller than you," she pointed out. "I need to get to swimming."

"We know, we came to watch," Wolf said. He had her bags. "Come on, we'll be late."

The headmaster, now talking with Weasel and much more relaxed, led them to the pool. They sat in the stands, the headmaster left, and Valkyrie came out in her swimsuit a moment later.

They cheered her and she got a wolf-whistle so she started modelling the outfit for them with a sassy grin. The boy's parents were there and looked a little shocked that they were doing that.

Mr Swansy came out. "I trust you were all good today?" Valkyrie smirked. "Had a hearty lunch?"

They did their warm-ups again and it didn't take that long for Wolf to turn up by the poolside where he shouldn't be and take over Valkyrie's training, pushing her harder and harder than Mr Swansy did, and she surprised herself with how fast she went in the water.

"Edgley!?" Mr Swansy shouted at her. "You've been holding out on me!"

The lesson was incredibly tiring but rewarding, ending in a race between the three competitors that Valkyrie won by over two full seconds. The best part was when she noticed one of the said boys shuffling quickly to the changing rooms to hide his crotch – she supposed Wolf had gotten rather wet during the training session, and she'd certainly seen him eyeing her up brother. If she hadn't been so affected by the gay, she'd likely be in the same position.

She wanted to smack her own head for thinking stupid things sometimes.

OOOhhh excitement! :D Leave me a review on what you think will happen next... you won't get it. At least I hope not because it involves pain and awful-human-being-ness... hehehe guess anyway! :D