Chapter 42: ~Chapter 13~ Part 3

"Remind me not to get on your bad sides ever again," I complained aloud as we walked down the stairs. "It was a complete dud too."

The switched PE was our last class, so we changed, got our bags, and were on our way to pick up Josh and the rest of the gang from the infirmary.

"Don't worry chief, next time I'm sure you will do better."

"Next time? I know you guys had fun throwing things at me, but I personally think we don't need any more testing."

Neither Judy nor the class rep answered, but they exchanged some very telling glances that somehow made me afraid of becoming a human target dummy at any moment. In the meantime, we reached the ground floor and headed for the nurse's office. Once we got there, I knocked hard on the door, and it instantly opened.

"O-ho-ho! We were expecting you."

I subtly rolled my eyes at the overly enthusiastic greeting and entered the already crowded infirmary. Josh was sitting on the bed with Angie by his side, the girl constantly poking his steadily growing bump like it was a free candy-dispenser button. I couldn't see the princess, but before I could ask about her whereabouts the nurse hopped before me with expectant eyes. I grimaced in annoyance, but I humored him nevertheless.

"What's up doc?"

"O-ho-ho! Now that you ask, I am actually still looking into your amnesia question. Sadly your friend didn't provide any new revelations, as he doesn't seem to be missing any memories, but fear not! I still have new ideas that might be of use. For example--"

"Marvelous!" I answered in mock enthusiasm while simultaneously grabbing hold of Judy by the shoulder and placing her in front of the old man. "I would love to listen, but I have to check on Joshua. Please talk with my assistant."

She gave me a deadpan glare, but I just smiled back at her. After pelting me over and over again even after I called off the experiment, this was the least she could do.

With that, I slipped past them and made my way over to Josh's bedside. Somehow the class rep managed to get there already, probably by slipping behind my back while I was focusing on the nurse.

"Hey there," I greeted him with a smile. "Where's the princess?"

"Elly went ahead to get Josh's bag. She should be waiting for us by the entrance," Angie answered while still poking Josh.

"Really? We didn't meet her on the way. Oh well." Saying so, I leaned forwards while placing my hand on my chin and looked Joshua over like I was an art critic assessing the quality of a post-modern statuette. In the end I nodded and stood straight again.

"Yup, you seem all right."

"Of course. I tried telling them, but no one would listen." He gestured for me to lean closer again and he added in a whisper, "I worry for Mr. Peabody though. He tried to ‘treat' me with a hammer."

"Oh, that?" I glanced over at the nurse, who was still in the middle of animatedly explaining something to my increasingly restless assistant. I returned my attention to Joshua and shrugged. "Yeah, he does that sometimes. Also, the proper term is ‘mallet'."

"Stop whispering and let's get going."

The instruction came from the class rep, who was still unusually cranky. I gave her a placating "Sure," and offered a helping hand to Josh. He obviously didn't need it, but I did so all the same.

Once we gathered everyone's stuff and I managed to peel the still very eager nurse away from my exasperated assistant, we finally left the premises and headed for the lockers. When we got there though, we were welcomed by a bizarre sight.

The princess, already in her outdoor shoes, was hugging the wall next to the entrance and peeking through the glass doors like she just fell out of a cheesy spy story. I didn't pay her much attention at first, but then I followed her gaze and found her looking at a large, black limo parked right in front of the school gates. Angie and the class rep were still playing mother hens around Josh even as he was insisting that he was perfectly fine, and Judy was on the other end of the hall changing her shoes, so I figured I might as well check on her. I hurriedly jumped into my sneakers and (please excuse the incredibly lame pun) sneaked up on the girl still staring through the door and poked her in the back.

She let out an amusing little yelp, which was expected. What I didn't see coming was the moment of relief showing on her face when she turned around and realized it was me, though it only lasted for a moment.

"What are you doing?!" she hissed at me, but since saying ‘your back was wide open and I thought it would be fun to pester you a little' would've made me sound childish, which I most certainly wasn't, I instead pretended it was a rhetorical question and looked through the glass door instead.

"What are you looking at?"

She stayed silent for a while, but then she leaned over as well and gestured towards the limousine with her chin.

"It's him."

"Who?" I looked closer, and I finally realized there was a man standing by the school gate, and he was talking to... "Snowy? Ah, then that must be her brother."

"Yes." She looked up at me, her eyes uncharacteristically uncertain. "What do we do now?"

"What do you mean? We go and say hi."

"Are you crazy?!" she hissed again and tried to hold me back even though I haven't shown any intent to actually go outside yet.

"Oh please. We are in front of a school. What's the worst thing that could happen?"

"That's called ‘tempting fate'," my assistant butted in from the left field, her bag already thrown over her shoulder and ready to go.

"Don't you get started with it too," I warned her wryly as, against the protest of the princess, we walked through the automatic door.

As we got closer, I was hit by a strange wave of irritation, and the longer I looked at the man, the stronger it became. It was a strangely familiar feeling, like when I first met Sebastian. Anyways, the guy in front of me was pretty big, about as tall as me, though a little on the lean side. He was wearing an expensive-looking black suit that probably had some kind of fancy-sounding Italian designer's name attached to it. It was complimented by a pair of black leather shoes and matching leather gloves on his hands.

On an even closer look, I could make out his face as well. He was moderately handsome in a slightly gaunt, angular way. It wasn't surprising considering that the same could be said about literally everyone (though his mug somehow seemed eminently punchable), and while it was hard to guess his age at first glance, I would've put it somewhere in the late-twenties range. His hair was long and lustrous like his sister's, reaching almost to his collarbone, and he wore it swept back. In his case it was pitch black, which made Snowy's white even more striking as they stood next to each other.

Speaking of her, she seemed relaxed, but just by looking at her body language, I could tell that she was in her ‘vamp' mode. It was something about how she swayed her hips and held her arms under her chest, but it was one of those ‘once you noticed it you cannot unsee it anymore' things, like those magic eye pictures.

By the time we got into earshot, they also noticed us and fell silent, so I couldn't catch what they were talking about. In retrospect, I realized I could've listened in on them with my newfound ability, but it didn't occur to me at the time. When they faced me, I could see Snowy's façade waver for a moment, but then she eased her face into a sultry smile that didn't fit her at all.

"Hey," I greeted them both with a light wave.

"Hello there, handsome," Snowy answered with the expected purr, though I could have sworn she nearly stuttered in the middle. Her brother on the other hand looked me over like he was sizing me up (and as far as I knew, he was doing just that) until he smiled at me with that broad, eyes-half-closed, so-full-of-himself-he-is-about-to-spill-over-the-edge smile that is a characteristic of cheap bad guys who think they are smarter than everyone else in the room combined. If that didn't make it abundantly clear, let me spell it out: I really, really didn't like his mug.

"Well, well, well... If I'm not mistaken, you are the boy who's been helping my sister out as of late." He paused and his smile faltered for a moment as he looked at something behind me. I only spared a glance, but it still told me that the rest of the gang caught up with us in record time, with the princess stopping right beside me. For some reason she was breathing hard, so I figured she might've actually run the distance. Nevertheless, she stood tall and gave the man one of her patented glares. Still smiling he looked over our group one by one, only lingering on each face for less than a second before his gaze returned to me, this time with a dangerous twinkle in his eyes. "It seems like you keep a... colorful company."

"Indeed I do," I answered while employing a fake smile of my own. "And you are the Esteemed Elder Brother of Snowy if I'm not mistaken."

"Indeed." He took a step towards me and removed his thick black leather glove from his right hand before offering it to me. "Noir Irdu Inanna."

I was about to raise my hand in return when the princess at my side hissed a sharp "Wait, don't!" at me... which I promptly ignored and proceeded to clasp the guy's hand anyways. Even though it wasn't particularly cold outside and he was wearing a glove, his hand was surprisingly chilly. His smile widened for a moment as he began to squeeze, but then as I began to squeeze back, it immediately got overlaid by a surprised frown, which then abruptly boiled into a death-glare before the smile returned once again. It all took less than a second, but it was enough for me to cement my initial impression of this guy: he was a pompous asshole of astronomical proportions.

"I'm Leonard Dunning. It's a pleasure to make acquaintance."

"The pleasure is mine," he answered in a deceptively pleasant voice and I flashed another toothy smile at him.

"Are you perchance about to take Snowy home?"

"Indeed."

"Oh, that's a pity. We were just about to invite her to hang out with us. You see, there is this new gyros place nearby that we are just dying to try out. Right, Josh?"

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"Y-Yeah..." my friend muttered uncertainly, which was understandable under the circumstances. He probably had no idea why we even got into this situation.

The big brother (whom I was not going to call Noir, because it sounded pretentious as all hell and it made him sound more impressive than he really was) gave a good, long look at my friend, and after a few seconds his smile crept back onto his face.

"I see. I think it would be inappropriate for an older brother to interfere with his beloved sister's social life." He faced Snowy next. "Very well. You may go out, but I expect you to be home before curfew." Not even bothering to wait for her response, he turned to Josh again and gave him a grin that made all other grins in existence pale in comparison. "Please let my sister take good care of you."

"Um... Sure?" Josh mumbled in response, even more confused than before.

"That sounded really corny."

"What?" His eyes suddenly snapped at me, the murderous sparks once again twinkling in them like tiny firecrackers.

"I said, that sounded dumb. I'm sure it sounded way cooler in your head, but it really wasn't. It had something of a creepy uncle vibe to it."

The guy's smile slowly hardened as he leaned closer and his voice dropped into a dangerously low rumble.

"Are you trying to pick a fight with me, boy?"

"Naaaaah! Me, picking a fight with you? What could have given you such a strange idea?"

We stared daggers at each other for a good five seconds without blinking while trying to out-fake-smile the other. In the end, big bro let out a wheezy chuckle and shook his head.

"And here I thought we could be friends."

"No, you didn't."

"... You are right. I didn't." After our short exchange, he paused for a long beat and looked over me with something of a slasher smile. "Here's a friendly advice though: I suggest you should be careful on your way home, young man."

Now it was my turn to let out a derisive chuckle.

"Oh please. That's the second thinly-veiled death threat I received from an inexplicably well-dressed man in the past week, and yours is by far the less impressive one."

For a moment the guy's smile threatened to dissolve into a full-blown glare, but then he stopped and for some reason spent several seconds staring at his still ungloved right hand. At last, he put on the missing glove and turned back to me with a surprisingly neutral expression.

"Then let me put it this way: I might be a nice man, but some of my friends are a lot less amicable than I. You better make sure you watch your mouth, or they might just take offense in my stead and... Well, let's just say you wouldn't want to meet them in a dark alley."

With that, he gave us a shallow nod and he turned around in a way I was sure he intended to be dashing.

"You see Crowey? I knew you had it in you."

He twitched a little at the mention of his brand new, off-the-cuffs nickname, but didn't turn around; he walked up to the limo and tapped its door with his finger. It opened seemingly by itself, though I figured it was someone hiding behind the darkened windows that did it, and he got inside after sending one last death glare at me. I grinned at him in return, though he probably didn't see it as the car immediately lurched forwards the moment he closed the door behind himself and disappeared down the street.

Everyone was silent for a few seconds, then the girls seemed to let out their breath in unison. I looked over with a flat "What?"

"Why did you have to do that?!" the princess burst out first.

"Do what?"

"All that!"

"The Chief is a man of many talents," my assistant stated dryly in an ironic echo. "Infuriating people for no reason is merely one of them."

"Yeah, yeah. How about we get going?" I gestured for Snowy to come over, and she did so without a word. Needless to say, the moment her brother left she immediately dropped the vamp act and returned to the awkward girl we all knew and loved.

"That was foolish." She stated dryly, though if her eyes were any indication, she was much more rattled than her voice had indicated. "You shouldn't have angered my brother."

"Nah, this would have happened sooner or later anyways. I told you, I already knew we wouldn't get along when I first talked to him."

In the meantime, I began walking and the group grudgingly followed after me.

"What did you call him at the end?" Angie posed the question after she elbowed her way to the front. "Crowey?"

"Yeah." Her, and in extension the others', eyes urged me to explain. "His name means black, but calling him a raven would have made him sound too cool, so I went with a crow instead. It also rhymes with Snowy."

"I was meaning to ask," Josh interrupted before I could explain the profound thought processes that led to this nickname. "Why are you calling Lili ‘Snowy'?"

Now it was the class rep's turn to butt in.

"The better question is, why are you calling Neige ‘Lili'?"

"Huh? I thought that was her given name?" He glanced at Snowy. "Was I wrong?"

"No. I don't mind."

"Oh, that's a relief. For a moment I thought I messed up."

"No, it's fine..."

"Excuse me?" Now it was the princess's turn to interrupt. By now they might as well have passed a baton around and made it official. Anyways, she pointed at me and said, "You said you already received a threat this week? Who was it?"

"Hm? Sebastian, of course. Who else?" I thought my comment about the person also being sharply dressed would have made that clear, but apparently it didn't.

"How come this is the first time I've heard about this?!"

"Oh come on, it's not like he actually meant it." I paused for a moment. "Well, at least I don't think he meant it. Or did he?"

"I have a better question," Judy declared, grabbing the proverbial baton for herself. "Are we even going the right way?"

We stopped in our tracks and everyone was looking at me.

"What? How should I know?"

"I see..." Angie declared as she suddenly came to the front and puffed her chest out. "It is time for me to take over this expedition! Follow me!"

With that she began walking in the exact same direction we were walking before. We all looked at each other, and after a few moments of intense shrugging we all followed suit. In retrospect, this was the very first time all of us hung out at once, yet at the time it felt nothing special. As they say though, sometimes it's the simplest things that create the best memories.

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