Stepping back into the front hall, Kat closed the door behind her, huffing and shaking her head.
"Brr," she murmured, rubbing her forearms and stamping her feet. It had gotten pretty cold out there-- especially at night...
When she'd arrived, it had felt like very early September or late August. In the week and change she'd been here, though, it had settled firmly into autumn.
Shaking her head, she bolted and locked the door, slouching back up the stairs and into the bedroom.
When she opened the door, Grim was sitting up on the bed, rubbing his eye with a paw. "Mya--aaagh," he yawned, getting up onto his back paws and stretching. "Mrr-- h-hey, Kat... Where'd ya go?"
"Oh-- hey, Grim," she smiled, bumping the door closed with her hip as she slipped her sneakers off. "Sorry-- I couldn't sleep, so I went out to get some fresh air..."
"Oh," Grim yawned again, plopping back down into a sitting position. "Okay..."
Kicking her sneakers into the corner, Kat tossed her hoodie onto the sheet-covered chair. Then she started fumbling on the wall by the door for the light switch. "Hang on-- I'm gonna turn the lights on for a sec," she said. "I-- feel gross, so I'm gonna take a shower and get changed, but I can't find anything in the dark, so..."
Giving a begrudging grumble, Grim yawned one more time, flopping over onto his stomach. "Ugh-- fiiiiine, if you HAVE to," he muttered. "Just don't leave it on very long..."
"No worries," she replied, flicking the switch. The bulb in the single 'boob light' on the ceiling buzzed into life. "I'll probably just go right back to bed when I'm done... You're gonna have to deal with my wet hair, though, sorry."
"Rrr," Grim mumbled, burying his face in the rumpled blankets.
Gathering up her things, Kat hurried across the hall into the bathroom. Turning on the shower, she jumped in as quickly as she could.
Once she was actually in the shower, though, she ended up kind of... Staring at the wall for a while, standing just barely out of the stream of very hot water.
...That guy. That guy just now...
...After a second, Kat raised the hand he'd shaken, blinking blankly at her palm.
...Long, slim, oddly cool to the touch...
Hard as living iron.
...She knew she'd had a weird dream before she woke up in the coffin, but... Somehow, it seemed to fade with every passing day, and the harder she tried to hold onto it, the less she remembered.
...But there was a-- a... A monster, she thought, a terrifying monster. And a voice-- speaking dramatically, like a Shakespearean actor...
And-- a hand. A long, cool, slim hand, holding hers as she ran... And a warning....
...The hour grows long-- and time is scarce...
...Why did he have horns?
She might've thought he was, like, a beastperson of some kind... Maybe a wild sheep or goat or something. Except for the ears. And the teeth.
The ears were more like-- elf ears... The long, graceful kind, like the Zelda ears, that she'd always preferred, aesthetically speaking, to the shorter, LOTR movie or Vulcan ones. And the teeth-- no way a goat or a sheep-person'd have vampire fangs like that.
Crowley had pointed ears, but-- his were actually the shorter kind... As did that little guy, Lilia. She'd never actually asked the Headmaster outright, but-- he was probably a fae, right?
But that guy... Why were his ears so much longer? And-- the horns...
...Oh god, the autism was kicking in again, because all she could think right now was 'I wanna touch'. The horns-- the smooth, ribbed texture looked so-- so... Appealing, for lack of a better word?
She pulled herself out of her thoughts, turning her attention back onto the task of showering.
"Phew," Kat sighed, pushing open the door to the bedroom with one hand, holding her piled-up uniform in the other arm. "Okay, I'm back... The shower made me sleepy, so I'm just--"
She cut herself off with a yawn, shaking her head as she closed the door behind her. "Just gonna put my uniform away, then go back to bed..."
"Okay," Grim yawned back, rubbing his eyes with a paw again.
Nodding, she started moving around the room, putting things away.
Picking up the uniform jacket from the floor, she shook it out, looking critically at it. Ugh-- she should probably try to find an iron... This was all wrinkly. And she'd have to figure out how to do laundry, too... She was starting to run out of socks.
Shaking her head, she walked over to the closet, opening it and pulling out a coat hanger to hang it on. Once she'd buttoned it up and closed the closet door again, though, she kind of just... Stood there.
...She was thinking about that guy again.
...Why was everybody in this school so fucking weird? Was he, like, a chuni? An edgelord?
And what he called her-- child of man. Or... Maybe Child of Man? She wasn't sure whether to add the mental capitalization or not. It made a difference-- a very slight difference, but a difference nonetheless.
And-- how he'd looked at her, too... And talked to her. It wasn't exactly-- condescending, or patronizing... And it wasn't really like he was looking down on her, either, but... There was a-- disconnect there. A disconnect that she couldn't quite put into words... Like they were both coming at the conversation, or interaction, from completely opposite sides.
It was-- weird...
"HEY!"
Kat jumped a little, looking around. "H-Huh?" She asked, rather stupidly.
Grim, sitting up on the bed, crossed his forelegs with a huff. "Geez-- I've been callin' your name for, like, two whole minutes! What, you didn't hear me?"
"Uh--" Blinking hard, Kat shook her head. "N-No," she admitted, rubbing the back of her head sheepishly. "Sorry, I-- I was thinking about something..."
"Yeah, no kiddin'," Grim grumbled. "More like spacin' out, though, not thinking..."
He paused, putting his head on one side and flicking an ear. "Did somethin' happen?" He asked eventually.
Kat blinked again. "Huh?" She ventured after a second.
"Did somethin' happen?" Grim repeated. "Didja', like... Have a weird dream or something? You've had a real spacey look on your face this whole time... I mean--" he corrected himself. "Spacier than usual."
"Okay-- first of all, rude," she replied automatically. "Second of all, okay, fair... And-- third of all..." Pausing, she folded her arms, shifting back and forth a little.
"Okay, something-- DID happen. I guess. When I went outside just now. There was..." Pausing again, she put a fist to her chin.
"...There was a... Weird guy out there," she said eventually. "I-- I don't think he was, like... Up to anything sketchy? Exactly? But-- he was, like... Wandering around outside the fence, I guess, and we kinda-- ran into each other."
"A guy?" Grim repeated, frowning suspiciously. "What kinda guy?"
"He was-- or they were..." Trailing off, Kat chewed the inside of her cheek thoughtfully.
"...Really tall," she said after a second. "Like, super tall-- and he had... Um-- he had horns."
"...Haah?" Grim asked flatly, twizzling his ears. "Horns? What's THAT s'posed to mean?"
"I mean--" Kat gestured helplessly.
"I mean literally-- he had horns. Like, on his head. Here." With one hand, she indicated the front of her own head, around where she thought the stranger's horns might have originated.
"Pretty long ones, too... Or-- tall? And he-- um..." Pausing again, she tilted her head.
"...Hang on," she said slowly. "It might be easier if I just..." Moving across the room, she sat back down on the edge of the bed, picking up the schoolbag from the floor next to it.
"I'm just gonna... Draw him? I guess? I mean, I don't-- I can't draw super realistically, but I'll try to... Get the-- basic idea across? 'Cause I feel like that'd be easier than trying to describe him with words.."
Flipping it open, she pulled out the first notebook she found, opening it all the way to the back and finding a pencil.
Grim came up next to her, watching with tilted head.
She started sketching, with light, short, scribbly strokes. A shape started to take form-- first an uneven circle, extended out to a tapering point.
A light cross roughly at the center, a scribbled oval to mark the position of the ear... Then a long neck, and a very rough pair of shoulders.
Grim kept watching intently, head whipping back and forth like he was watching a laser pointer.
After a few minutes-- maybe, it was kinda hard to tell when she was really in the zone-- Kat put the pencil down. She held the notebook out in front of her. "It was-- kiiiind of like this," she said.
"...Huh," Grim mused, hopping into her lap to get a closer look. "This is what he looked like, huh?"
"More or less," Kat replied, shrugging. "Well-- I'm pretty faceblind, and I'm definitely no police sketch artist or anything, but... I guess-- the vibes? Are right? That's-- the basic idea I got from him, yeah."
It wasn't her best work... It was a very rough sketch, but nothing was glaringly wrong, as far as she could see.
Okay, the facial features probably weren't accurate, and she was a little iffy about the hair... But-- well, she was right. The general vibes of the person shone through pretty well...
Long, layered hair, a slim face, a few faint lines on the cheek to suggest the sharpness of cheekbones... Long, pointed elf ears, a faint smile with fangs peeping out, and... The horns. The horns weren't exactly right-- she felt like they were longer, for one, and... Probably should've been closer to the forehead?
But... For a very basic sketch, it was okay.
"...Huh," Grim said thoughtfully again, folding his front legs. "Okaaay... An'-- what did this guy say his name was, again?"
Kat shifted awkwardly. "He-- didn't actually tell me his name," she admitted. "He said-- he said something like, it was better if I didn't know it... Whatever the fuck that means."
"Whaat?!" Grim demanded, looking up at her incredulously. "For real?! You told 'im YOUR name, right?"
"Yeah, I did," she replied, tossing the notebook down onto the floor and picking him up off her lap. "But he said-- uhhh..."
Standing up with him in her arms, she paused for a second, tilting her head. "...That I could refer to him with a-- name of my own choosing? So-- I- I think he told me to, like, give him a nickname, basically..."
"Ehhhh," Grim said thoughtfully as she moved back over to the light switch, flicking it off again. "Okaaay... Guess you're right-- he does kinda sound like a weirdo."
"Mmm," she muttered, shuffling back to the bed with a yawn. Plopping him down gently, she took off her glasses, putting them back on the bedpost as she crawled back into bed.
Grim hurried over, ducking under the covers she lifted for him and curling back up under her chin as she lay on her side. "Well?" He asked with another yawn. "D'ya have any ideas for 'im?"
"Uh-- no, not really," she admitted. "Although-- oh; wait, no, nevermind. That's-- that's dumb..."
An idea-- or rather, two ideas-- had occurred to her simultaneously, but... Nah. Nah, she definitely shouldn't use either of those ones...
"Huh?!" Grim asked eagerly, untucking himself and leaning back to look at her. "No, no, c'mon-- tell me! I wanna hear!"
"Ugh-- okay, okay, FINE!" Kat huffed, rolling her eyes. "Just-- don't laugh, okay?"
Pausing, she chewed the inside of her cheek for a second, then grumbled begrudgingly. "Well-- the first one that popped into my head was, like... Horny Boy or something," she admitted. "But-- that's an immediate no."
"Huh?" Grim asked, swiveling his ears at her. "How come? Sounds pretty spot-on, to me..."
Kat looked at him for a second, then shook her head. "...Nevermind. Don't worry about it, okay?" She was NOT going to have this conversation tonight.
"And the other one-- it was..." She trailed off, pursing her lips.
"...Well?" Grim asked. "What is it?"
"Well-- the other one, it's..." She hesitated for a second, then sighed.
"...It was Homestuck," she admitted begrudgingly. "It's a very, very long story, but... Um, basically, it was a-- it's a... Comic? Back in my world? That got pretty popular? And-- the main thing everybody knew it for was... It had people with horns in it. So-- that's kind of... Immediately where my mind went to. Unfortunately."
"...Huh," Grim muttered, lifting his head and propping his cheek on his paw. "Well-- you're right, it IS kinda a dumb thing to call somebody... Like, it's not really a NAME, ya know?"
"Yeah, you're right," Kat agreed, yawning again as she put her head down on the pillow. "I'll think of something better tomorrow..."
Closing her eyes, she heard Grim muttering to himself a little. "Horns-- horns... Hornward? Hornthony? Nah-- horn... That's-- that's 'tsuno', right? Tsuno... Tsunosuke? Tsuno... Tsuno... AHA!"
Jumping, Kat jerked her eyes open, gaping at Grim's sudden smug grin barely three inches away from her face. "Whgh-- JESUS!" She panted, giving him an affronted look. "What the hell was THAT for?!"
"I GOT it!" Grim declared proudly, apparently ignoring her. "How 'bout you call 'im Tsunotaro?"
"Tsuno...Taro?" Kat repeated, tilting her head a little. "That's-- huh..."
It... Wasn't what she'd been expecting, exactly, but...
"Tsunotaro," she repeated again, slowly this time. "Huuuuh... Well-- it's... Not really what I was thinking, but... Actually, that's not bad."
It really wasn't, actually... It came off the tongue in a pleasing way, easy to say but not overly simple. But-- it also sounded surprisingly Japanese...
...She wasn't going to think too hard about that. The fact that this world-- or this school, at least-- mainly spoke English was honestly a huge blessing, so... She wasn't going to go around poking mentally into such gift-horsey plotholes or whatever.
Just in case.
"Well--" She yawned again. "I'm-- really gonna go to sleep now... 'Night, Grim."
"G'night," Grim mumbled, snuggling back under her chin again. "Hey-- if ya see 'im again, make sure to tell 'im I came up with the nickname, a'ight? Don't go takin' credit for my genius..."
"Sure thing," she replied.
Giving a deep sigh, she looked out at the darkness behind her closed eyelids, forcing herself to relax.
...Okay. Time to process everything that had happened today.
It wasn't that she was dumb, exactly-- she knew she wasn't dumb, even though she did call herself that sometimes. She just-- needed a little more time to sort through everything than other people... So, especially when a LOT of things happened all at once, she was a little slower on the uptake.
She started sifting mechanically through the day's events, pausing when she came to a particularly large 'chunk' or 'clump'.
First-- Jack. Jack Howl...
...He didn't seem like a bad kid, exactly.
Well-- okay, he didn't seem like a kid much in the first place... Why the hell was he so big? He was taller than Leona, even!
But-- he didn't seem... Well, he didn't seem like the other Savanaclaws. Sure, he was standoffish and snappy, but not mean or menacing...
...And he'd protected them. He said he wasn't, but he had. If he hadn't stepped in like that, then--
Kat shuddered a little. They probably wouldn't have KILLED them-- hopefully... But...
And-- there was that guy... The newly-appointed 'Tsunotaro'.
Well, she'd already gone through all her thoughts about THAT situation, so-- there wasn't much else to think about...
...It was weird, though.
And-- Leona...
He'd seemed-- different today, somehow. Different than when she'd encountered him at the greenhouse that time, at least... That time, he'd-- really almost punched her. If it wasn't for Ruggie... She shuddered again.
But-- maybe she was crazy, or it was her slowly drifting thoughts, sinking closer and closer to sleep, talking, but... Had he been-- avoiding her? Maybe he... Did he-- purposely sideline her? How come?
At the gardens, he'd said he wasn't above hurting somebody without magic... So-- why was he...
...She was too tired to think about this anymore.
As she finally started drifting off into almost-sleep, a couple of her neurons fired, connecting two pieces of information...
Ruggie. Ruggie Bucchi. Slim, nimble... Sandy hair.
Sand-- sandwich. The sandwich. A body-- moving on its own...
But before she could complete the connection, she was, finally, engulfed in an exhausted sleep.
Author's Notes:
The Situational Japanese strikes again.
(I'm sorry, but I will face 'Hornton' and walk backwards into hell.)
(I KNOW it's 'the same', or similar, technically, but... I find it-- easier to say? And more pleasing to read and listen to? 'S' and 'T' sounds just... Go better together, in general, I think. And it looks better. Idk, the matching Ts? It's just-- more visually appealing.)
...Fr though, I... Could NOT actually be in TWST and not have a constant 'wanna touch' reaction. Beastfolk ears and tail, fae ears, Horny Boi's horns, Idia's hair...
If you're ND, you probably understand, lol. My brain just goes 'mmm. Texture' and I have to physically restrain myself from touching the thing.
I think Idia's hair and Grim's ears are about the same temperature, which is... Not actually as hot as real fire, because there's NO way these MFs are walking around being active fire hazards. Especially with how long Idia's freakin hair is, he'd be burning down the school on a daily basis if it was, like, 'normal' fire.
This-- probably applies to Ortho too? Obviously it's not, like, 'biological' with him, but... Yeah, I don't think Idia would make HIM an active fire hazard, either. Maybe only the port in his chest is actually dangerously hot, or has the capacity to be dangerously hot. Like, with extended periods of direct contact, or if he's using a bunch of energy all at once, like actually flying instead of just hovering.
(I'm mainly only saying this because. I. I want Ortho to be huggable. Let me hug the child without burning myself. Please. PLEASE. I don't care that he's all hard and rigid, I MUST HUG HIM.)
...If. You've been paying attention, and if you have the Forbidden Knowledge, you-- might have seen Kat's other possible nickname coming. If you did...
...Hi. How's it going with y'all?
...I'm not reading the second comic. I'm ignoring it. I pretty much gave up on the property after my stabby mobster dad got decapitated and my Comfort M/F Ship was sunk in such a flat-out disrespectful way.
...I. actually did a very rough sketch of Malleus, completely from memory and without any references. To give myself a reference of what Kat would draw, since she's basically me. And. Idk what I did, but his hair-- like his bangs, and the top of his head-- somehow ended up looking like Silver.
The fact that I didn't shade in his hair probably has something to do with it, but... Why do they both have that little ahoge at the top of their heads? Sure, they curve the opposite way from each other, but...
...Cute headcanon acquired: Silver actually cuts/styles his bangs to resemble Malleus's.
...Anyway, if anybody's curious, I'll figure out a way to post it or link it somehow, lol.
I'm just trying to keep the number of chapters the same and keep up with the rhyming couplets thing, lol. And, also, I'm imagining what I'd actually do in any given scenario/what I'd think about.
Once again... No shade to the game MC, but... Well, let's just say Kat actually brings her own brain cell to the table, instead of having to wait for a turn on the extra one that goes pinballing between the Heartslabyuls, besides Riddle, since he also has his own.
...Do you ever think about/realize/remember something when you're, like, RIGHT about to fall asleep, but you can't remember it when you wake up? That happens to me way more than I'd like to admit, and it pisses me off every single time.