This chapter took me a bit longer than I have thought; well, I had a lot of studying to do lately, so I rushed to get it ready as soon as I had time again. Anyway, here it is. Characters not mine, mistakes are.
Friday was followed by the weekend, so that Cloud had had some time to recover from his encounters with Elena and her crazy friends and able to relax a bit, although he had been working on his history task most of it. Not that it was really difficult. All he was doing for a start was to read and memorize. Memorizing he could do, but it was talking in front of the class that made this whole thing most disturbing. He didn't know yet whether or not he could do that, and it wasn't helping that all the other kids had to do it, too. He almost hoped that he and Elena would be chosen first to give their presentation; then it would soon be over.
But it wasn't only that. It was the fact that, before being able to close this matter, he would have to meet with Elena again at least once or twice. Even if they had divided the work between them now, it was still necessary to decide in which order the different parts were to be read out, they had to look through each others writings to make sure they didn't contradict each other and that nothing was repeated; and once that was done, they needed to work on proper connections between their papers in case they would switch very often.
And the handout they too would have to write and design together. It was gonna be difficult. At least with Elena. And Cloud had the horrible feeling that the two guys probably would be around as well. With Reno he didn't have too much of a problem, but Zack?!
Zack freaked him out, and he didn't even know why. Maybe it really was just his outgoing nature. The problem about it was that he actually had begun to seem to Cloud like he maybe was a really nice guy; after all, he had been open-minded towards him despite of his not-too-friendliness, and that was more than most of the other kids were ready to do. Cloud had to stop that, somehow. Anything to stop Zack from being so... interested in him. Well, a few days of treating somebody like shit had so far always worked. It would work with Zack, too, even if his tactic had shown little to no effects so far. Well, he just would have to put more than just his ususal half-hearted effort in it, then.
Cloud sighed and decided to return to the here and know. He could worry later. Right now he was way too tired, which could be one of the side-effects of the still boiling heat. And people were always acting so bemused if he told them why he hated summer. Well, that was if he actually told them. He couldn't really remember when he had told somebody anything really significant about himself the last time. Damn, again he was thinking too much.
Balancing his tray on one hand and clutching a book to his chest with the other, Cloud glanced nervously around the cafeteria. He had known before that it would be a bad idea to come here. He didn't only hate summer, he hated crowds, too. And there was never a more crowded place at school than the cafeteria at lunchtime.
Maybe he could still abandon the idea of eating here and make a plan on how to escape from this place without anybody noticing. Hell, why was he here at all?! Oh, yeah... he was damn hungry. With oversleeping today and having no time to eat breakfast or even take something edible with him, he had been practically starving during the first periods. No, if he didn't want to have to think about food the rest of the day, he had to go through this.
If he couldn't just sneak out with his tray and sit somewhere else. And with that he didn't mean the outside area of the cafeteria which he could observe from here through the glass front covering one wall entirely, where students sat laughing and joking underneath the trees. If possible, it was even more stuffed there, and in addition, far to hot for his taste.
How sad that he couldn't just smuggle his food into the library. Cloud knew it was a more than silly idea which said a lot about how he wasn't as grown-up as he tried to appear. But just in these moments of indecision some particularly large groups of seniors and juniors streamed into the cafeteria and around him as they went past. And they were making a lot of noise. Plus, they were invading his personal space way too much.
That was the last drop it took. Cloud turned to leave.
But first, it was kinda difficult to get out of the cafeteria when about two hundred people were just trying to get in(at least it looked like they were that much), and secondly, he apparently had overestimated the brains of some of the older students, which he realized when, at that same moment he turned around, some bulky blockhead bumped right into him, throwing him off balance.
"You damn...," Cloud hissed as he very nearly hit the floor. He already saw himself sprawled face down on the ground, with the contents of his lunch tray thrown around him in a fifteen-feet-radius, and sparks of panic rushed through him, making every nerve tingle in distress.
Thankfully, he managed to regain his balance before he had to hide himself from the rest of the school for half a year, even managing to not drop his tray. After several moments he had to take to recover from his shock, wide-eyed and breathing heavily from the moment of sheer panic, he looked around to find that asshole who very nearly knocked him over to tell him exactly what he thought of him.
Okay, so maybe he was quite small, but damn, he couldn't be that much out of the normal field of vision that people just overlooked him. He growled dangerously under his breath. Oh, he would so...
But the guy was nowhere to be seen, having disappeared among the groups. What a dork.
Well, so much for his plans of just leaving the cafeteria, Cloud thought gloomily. Even if nothing really had happened, he was well aware that his nearly-accident had attracted the attention of quite a few of the students around them. Okay, so most of them had lost interest when they saw that there wasn't anything more to it, perhaps were even disappointed that there was no one to laugh at after all, and resumed talking with their friends.
But there was one pair of eyes which didn't leave him as quickly, but still stared at him through a gap in the several rows of eating and talking students that separated them.
And that was the second time when Cloud saw Zack. Only this time, Elena's friend was sitting at a long table along with quite a couple of guys and... girls. A lot of girls, actually. Girls with ridiculously high voices, which could be even heard near the door where he was standing. Girls who wore pastel-colored clothes, girls who chatted with each other, the boys and with Zack - well, at least they tried to.
But Zack didn't pay attention to anyone at his table at the moment, because he was too busy staring at Cloud. And as long as he did that, Cloud couldn't just walk out the doors, because he had the strange, but horrible feeling that Zack would come after him if he did that. Why, he didn't know. But he also didn't know why Zack was looking him over like that - again. He shifted uneasily, not knowing what to do. Maybe hide somewhere inbetween the crowds and wait until Zack was busy with his own private life again, and then sneak out of here. Yeah, maybe he should do that.
But just now, Zack started moving, and Cloud couldn't tear his eyes away as the older boy slowly pulled something out of his shirt pocket, gaze never leaving Cloud. He blinked confusedly when he realized that it was the very same red notebook he had been scribbling in a few days ago in the library. What the... ? Cloud narrowed his eyes. What the hell was that guy up to when he was doing this?! Next was a small pen, and, still moving slowly as if he didn't want to scare away a shy cat, Zack opened the notebook, still looking at him meaningfully.
Cloud, however, didn't get any of this. He didn't get the small smirk that had formed on Zacks lips, and he sure as hell didn't get what that imbecile might be writing down now, eyes still never leaving him for more than two seconds, expression quickly changing to that of a person who was just trying to solve a really complicated math task.
It was then that Cloud came to a decision. Fine, so he would pull himself together and wouldn't just leave the cafeteria. But it didn't look as if he would even find a free chair. From what he could see, all the tables were more than full. His heart sank when he realized that there probably wouldn't be any unoccupied table all for himself like he had been hoping.
"Hey - you."
Cloud flinched. When he whirled around to see who had approached him, it was with a certain amount of jumpiness; the split-second of panic he went through earlier still had power over him. But this was nothing to the shock it gave him when he caught sight of the student who had decided to terrify him even more. Almost jumping out of his skin, he jerked back a step to stare wide-eyed at the scariest person he had ever seen.
Well, it wasn't so much the overall appearance; he had seen people like that before. It was more the first impression his mind was confronted with. Piercing, dark eyes stared down at him out of a pale face with the most horrific black and red make-up; obviously the person tried to look as frightening as possible, and that alone would have been enough for Cloud to be sure that he rather didn't want to meet this... subject in the dark. The rest was black leather, metal spikes and long, dark hair, and in addition the boy – Cloud assumed that it was a boy – was considerably taller than him and looming over him in a way that made him want to run and hide for a moment before his common sense kicked in.
And then the guy opened his mouth to talk, and Cloud instinctively took another step back.
"Are you okay?"
Cloud blinked. "... W-What?," he stammered confusedly after a second of coming to terms with the sentence he had just heard.
He heard a sigh. "I saw that... crash you had, and I just wanted to ask whether you have hurt yourself. I couldn't see everything from where I sat, so I came over to make sure you are alright. Is that so difficult to understand?!"
Silence. Cloud opened and closed his mouth several times, while his conversation partner blinked at his obvious bewilderment before sighing again, this time heavier and more audible.
"Sure, okay, understand," he muttered, sounding a bit disappointed. "And here I just wanted to help. Tell me when you have learned how to speak, and then I will ask you again, alright?"
And before Cloud had enough time to gather his senses and tell him to fuck off, the strange figure turned around and shuffled back to a table at the back, where Cloud could spot more dark figures. He shuddered and decided to get back to his own business.
He cast a quick glance to the spot where he had seen Zack sitting, telling himself that it wasn't due to his curiousness of how the spiky-haired lunatic would respond to the little "chat" Cloud just had with some sort of freak. To his surprise, that spot was empty. He merely shrugged; it wasn't his business, so he started to slowly move around the room. And surprisingly, he actually spotted a small table in the far corner which, by some miracle, hadn't been claimed yet. Relieved, Cloud made his way there. Maybe the lunch break wouldn't turn out to be that bad.
When he had finally reached the table, sitting down noticing that he couldn't see Zack from here, he slowly began to hope that this day would get better, and he once more realized how hungry he was. He set the book he was just reading aside to begin wolfing down his lunch, and although he knew the cafeteria food wasn't really that good, right now he didn't really care.
But Cloud couldn't enjoy his peace for long. He was about half finished with his food, whatever it was, when he startled as he heard an all too familiar snicker behind him.
"Jeez, did nobody tell you to be careful with whatever you eat here? Ah, but since your still fairly new, I guess you couldn't know." And with that, a cheerful Reno sauntered into his view, placing his tray onto his table without further ado, and seating himself across from Cloud. "Heh, and here I thought I wouldn't find a place to sit anymore. Got lucky, I guess; you're doing a good job, you know, scaring people away and all that. Nobody in their right mind would just come over and try to sit with you."
Cloud shot him a glare in response, and after about half a minute just watching Reno sitting there, supporting his chin in his hands and grinning at Cloud with a rather stupid expression, Cloud finally opened his mouth to say something, but Reno waved him off.
"Oh, trust me, I know exactly what you're about to say now. But since people always tell me tht I am not in my right mind, you don't have to worry; everything's fine."
Cloud closed his mouth again, unable to come up with an answer that sounded more intelligent than "...Huh?," so he left the issue unresolved. For now.
Throwing another well measured glare at Reno to let him know that he was not at all willing to communicate with him, Cloud returned to his plate of food. In fact, he wasn't really sure how to deal with the situation. With normal people, he had dealt well with so far. With people who were offended when they learned that he didn't show any signs of wanting to socialize with them, people who just turned around, shaking their heads, when all they ever got as response from him (if they got any) was a glare and sometimes, if they were lucky, some harsh words. People who just weren't interested to look any deeper.
But, in all his life, he so far never had to deal with people who knew about his reactions and still refused to give him the cold shoulder. Zack hadn't done it, but Zack was probably just plain crazy, Cloud had decided. And now Reno, who had seemed amused with him the last time they had met, but surely hadn't acted as ... unusual as his friend had.
Oh, now he had it! It was a conspiracy. It just had to be. They were trying to drive him mad. Maybe because they didn't exactly approve of how he had talked to Elena, or maybe just because they wanted to see in which ways his madness would show. Maybe... maybe they were some crazy science club members who were working on a weird project, and he was the item that was to investigate. First, they would make him lose sanity, and then they would lock him up in some dark room in a deserted part of the school to see what further reactions that would get out of him, and then they would analyze them, and God alone knew what else they had in mind. Maybe they would torture him slowly to death with their experiments, over weeks and months, and then they would dissect him, or maybe even take him apart when he was still alive, and then...
"Erm... hey... Cloud?"
Cloud blinked confusedly as he snapped out of his not-so-amusing thoughts, realizing that Reno must have been snapping his fingers in front of his eyes for a while now.
When he was convinced that Cloud wasn't looking directly through him anymore, Reno retrieved his arm and frowned. "You suddenly were looking so... disturbed. Did something happen to you today?"
"Oh, you bet," he heard a voice saying, but it wasn't Cloud's. Zack, who seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, set a mostly empty tray on the table, shifting the other two a bit so it fitted, then sat on a chair that he had dragged along behind him.
Reno snickered again. "Hey, escaped again?"
Zack snorted amusedly, if that wasn't impossible if you are grinning madly at the same time. "Really, that's not the question. What took you so long today? Why weren't you here earlier? You should have seen that."
Reno frowned. "Seen what?"
"How that idiot Ryan bumped into him full force." Zack chuckled quietly.
"Oh no, you're not serious! Damn, this is just great." Reno turned to Cloud, who looked like he had shrunk a little bit in his chair and was now glaring suspiciously at them over the rim of his glass.
"Hey, you didn't hurt yourself, did you?" Reno asked, concerned – which uncomfortably reminded Cloud of the scary guy who had asked him just the same only a few minutes ago. "If I only had known..."
"Nonsense, he's okay." Zack chuckled. His face brightened when he blabbered on: "I told you that you should have seen that. With the force of impact the moron used, he could have sent Cloud flying through the wall if he wanted to, and everybody who saw it expected to have him lying on their table in the next moment, but then, just when I thought he would at least break his nose, he suddenly just stood again, without even having spilled a drop from his drink! And he was holding the tray with just one hand, if I might add." Zack raised his eyebrows as he spared a rather appreciative glance at Cloud, who only shrunk a little more and narrowed his eyes, but stayed completely silent.
Only now did Zack seem to notice that Cloud was acting a little bit... odd. Or, to put it differently, odd in a different way than he had expected. Puzzled, he turned his head to check out the area behind Reno and himself, but couldn't see anything scary there.
"Is something bothering you?," he asked at last, but Cloud quickly shook his head, only to continue staring at them without uttering a word.
Reno sighed. "Anyway, don't you think we'll have to change a few words with that big Ryan idiot? Even if he won't understand anything if spoken in common english."
"Oh, don't worry, I already had a little talk with him," Zack responded with a glint in his eyes, cheerily munching up the last bits of his lunch.
"You had?"
"Trust me."
Reno raised his eyebrows. "I believe the issue is settled then. Anyway, Cloud," he turned his attention back to the sophomore, "What I wanted to ask the whole time – you don't happen to have anything planned today?" He watched confusedly, because it looked like Cloud had flinched at his voice.
Zack frowned. "You know... it's not like we'll bite you or something."
This time, there was no mistaking it – Cloud winced visibly, and Zack decided to resist the urge to add "At least not very often."
But then, seemingly gathering all his courage, Cloud sat up a bit and crossed his arms, glowering at them. "Who says I'll have to believe you?!"
"Please what?" Zack blinked, acknowleding out of the corner of his eye that Reno was turning to the side, desperately trying to stifle his laughter.
Cloud leaned forward a bit giving them a glare that would have chilled other people to the bone. "Is there any good reason you are following me around?! Tell me the truth, dammit!"
"You want a reason?" Reno scratched his head. "How funny of you, asking for a reason when there's clearly no one else who hangs around with you. We all know it's difficult for some people at the beginning, but that doesn't explain for any newcomer to be running around on his own like you do."
Cloud cocked his head to one side. "No?"
Zack smiled amusedly. "Wouldn't it be more common in your situation to have at least one friendly soul to show you around and answer questions and such? At this school, I have never seen new people that weren't surrounded by some eager students to help them settle in – apart from you. Sometimes even teachers take care of that. We didn't have a single exchange student in the three years that I have been here that didn't get two or three "babysitters" assigned to them. Didn't that happen to you, too?"
"Had some." Cloud stared at the ceiling and tried to appear bored.
Zack's turned into a grin. "I knew it!," he exclaimed happily. "Made them run away from you on the very first day, haven't you?!"
The blonde across him tensed, leaning back as far as he could. "What exactly does it concern you, huh?," he asked, reaching for his glass to take a sip from his milk shake, mostly to try and hide behind the drinking vessel.
"Oh, nothing much, really." Partly to hide his amused expression, Zack stared at his empty tray for a while, and then eyed Reno's, who quickly snatched it closer to him. "But maybe it is of interest to you that we're your new accompany now?" He wasn't at all surprised when he heard Cloud choke on the fluid - so much he knew of him now that he was aware of how unwelcome his decision was.
Reno stood up, taking Clouds drink from him and tried to pat his back compassionately, but his hand got pushed away with a force that was surprising considering Cloud's size and build.
Cloud hiccuped once or twice, doing his best to keep his intimidating expression as best as possible, which made Reno shake his head and greatly amused Zack.
"And who exactly," Cloud coughed, "assigned you to me?" He was feeling miserable. He knew exactly that, if these two idiots really decided to play his "babysitters", as Zack had put it, there would be one hell of work to do to convince them otherwise. Damn, this wouldn't be easy.
Zack, in the meanwhile, answered his question with a happy "Why, we did, of course," and Cloud coughed some more. "Don't suffocate on us here," Zack added, concerned and tempted to reach over do try what Reno just did, but knowing better than to actually do it.
"That's my decision, don't you think?!" Defiantly, Cloud grabbed his milk shake back from Reno, hoping that he managed to choke again on it, and maybe this time so hard, that... "Maybe it's even better if I die right here. Before you two get more opportunity to act out whatever evil plans you have."
"Evil plans?" Reno and Zack looked at each other, and Reno couldn't help but snicker. "Zack, you know what? You were right – as always. Your little project here is indeed a lot of fun."
It was then that they heard a crash and almost at the same time the surprised yells of several students, but when they hastily turned to see what Cloud had done now, he was gone. His glass along with the rest of it's contents was lying on the floor as well as his chair; and a few feet away from them a youth, who had apparently been in Clouds way, just scrambled back to his feet with a rather stupid expression in his face.
The two boys blinked when they recognized Ryan, who was quickly surrounded by his peers now, questioning him about "what the hell had happened". For a while, they were silent.
After clearing his throat a few times, Reno spoke up first. "Ryan will never live this down. Just imagine, for a football player to be knocked off balance by a tiny kid. Somehow, it was just the kind of revenge I wanted to see."
Zack only nodded dumbly, but quickly recovered to prove that he had made some observations as well. "That kid's damn fast," he told Reno, reaching for his notebook. "And he forgot a schoolbook." A slightly evil smile found it's way to Zacks lips. "Well, so at least he can't complain if I see him again today."
There, another part done. Don't know how long it will take for the next one to be uploaded, since I'll be on holidays soon. We'll see.