6: Earl Grey

Shit was gonna go down.

By the way Rinzen hand tilted her head to the side and narrowed her eyes dangerously at the shiny-suits- to the point where Ellie could vaguely see wisps of smoke rising off the collar of Coco Starr's suit-jacket- she was not in agreement with that course of action. Seychelle, she could see, was otherwise outwardly unemotional but unable to keep disgust off her face. Mars and Lukas seemed to thing the both of them were being trolled. Kole nearly got up and walked out, except for Dom's painfully tight grip on his forearm and the nails digging through his sleeve. The redhead let his head fall forward toward the table, but Kole's hand darted out and cushioned it before it had the chance to make contact. Ellie gushed inside over the fluffy pseudo-yaoi. Single sex schools did that to a girl.

Xander, Kat and Alexa smiled/leered graciously, as Aurea clapped in a girlish fashion and Charlotte rolled her eyes. Claire fiddled with the hem of her blouse, chewing on her lip. The Red Fountain seniors seemed largely dismissive of the whole thing, like it was some annoyance that could be ignored until it went away. Seychelle seemed like the type to use violence first and negotiation later to solve problems.; rather the same went for Rinzen only she looked like she could be very creatively threatening. Either that, or Claire's ability to judge other people's characters was glitching.

"Is anyone going to say anything else, or can we go?" Charlotte asked bluntly, crossing her arms. Kole took that as an opening to simply get up, hauling his stack of papers, Dom, and by extension Dom's stack of papers out of the room with the lifted-chin hauteur of the righteously indignant.

Lukas decided that he, too, could no longer stand the affront to his senses that the shiny-suits presented. He and Seychelle got up, linked arms and swept from the room. Well, Lukas swept and Seychelle swagged, but that was really immaterial, considering how Charlotte, and Aurea, and then Mars and Ellie were hauling ass as well. Claire sent a briefly pleading look to Ellie, who may or may not have caught it. Still, it was already too late considering that she'd already made the choice to get up and leave. Chiaro got up after them, tucking his hands in his pockets and papers under one arm, blinking sleepily and really not paying attention to the swooning left in his wake.

Heath stood and left a little too quickly to be unobtrusive, considering just how much his build resembled that of a mountain. Then it was just her and the other two girls in second year judging her hard and Xander, with whom she felt distinctly uncomfortable. Rinzen had dematerialised to some remote location again, probably to plot her fantastic career dispensing technically illegal apothecary's goods. Her comings and goings really couldn't be traced. Claire doubted that even if she touched the traces Rinzen could've left on the furniture that she'd be able to track the other girl's history. Her powers worked too well when she didn't need them to and glitched when she did. Besides, something she couldn't put her finger on told her that Rinzen didn't leave traces.

Claire ducked her head, rubbing her arms unconsciously and tidying the pile of papers in front of her. She didn't like it at all, being alone with people she didn't know who knew of her. At least the others, the ones who had left, hadn't- they'd been gutsy enough to take the chance and leave. Alexa had an annoying tic, playing with her hair with one gel-manicured finger and nibbling delicately at her swollen lower lip as Kat eyed her and Claire couldn't, wouldn't- her psyche wouldn't let her. Either she played it straight or she didn't play at all, and it was too late for option two.

Claire bit her lip. Where was Ellie when she needed her?

"Hayana Ailuro Koizumi," Seychelle said flatly, "is a rat bastard."

Rinzen rolled her eyes and applied a third coat of glossy black nail polish to her stubby nails as Seychelle rolled on her bed and settled on her back, her head dangling off one side and her feet the other. Lukas grinned, and went in to pinch cheeks, by Seychelle slapped him away before he got within much more than arms' reach.

"You smell, Lukas," she and Rinzen chorused at once. Lukas flinched and chuckled as Seychelle flopped around, peppering him with blows to the head and shoulders. Rinzen flung a green bottle at him and Lukas caught one-handed.

"Go wash your princess hair again, Lu," Rinzen smirked. "Keep the shampoo."

"What, because it's- Oh, odour neutralising," Lukas said, suddenly deflating into a puddle of embarrassment. Dropping to the floor beside Seychelle's head and shuffling to the low table to sit across from Rinzen, he toyed with the bottle of odour-neutralising shampoo while digging his feet into the plush carpet. Everything about Rinzen's space was clean and minimal, with dark walls offset by the large frosted glass window that let in the light from the balcony. A low, large bed was made up in black, and her table, desk and wardrobe were all done in white and brushed aluminium. The sole marks of decoration were the large, irregular geometric metal wall plaque and the thin measuring cylinders on the dresser. Black-stoppered and neatly labelled, they all contained varying levels of different coloured liquids. Seychelle did not want to think about what those liquids did or why the cylinder filled with ebony black was nearly three-quarters empty.

Lukas edged inadvisably closer as Rinzen casually continued to paint her nails. Meticulous as ever, the smears of black that did bleed onto her skin were immediately wiped into place with a pointed look and a slight tightening of her lips. It was strange, Lukas mused, to see such a commonplace thing going on with Rinzen the decidedly strange.

"Are you gonna take it?" he asked, prodding the contract papers sitting to one side of the other girl. Rinzen looked up from beneath heavy, dark lashes and snorted.

"You're piss crazy," she deadpanned, dipping her brush into the bottle of polish and swiping it over a half-painted nail. Really, that was all the explanation that Lukas needed because it really was piss crazy of him to expect that Rinzen Jang would go on intergalatic television when she didn't like being in the presence of large groups of people with whom she had no association. Part of the reason she didn't like people and people didn't like her was her inability to censor any of the morbid, indiscreet, sadistic, homicidal or just plain psychotic things that came out of her mouth. Another unfortunate part of the Rinzen Effect, that and her excessively violent reaction to everything (well, she insisted that everyone else didn't have enough pain tolerance, but Lukas suspected that that was not the problem).

Seychelle rolled, rolled and flailed, flailed and rolled and finally settled on her stomach facing them. "Hey, are you guys even listening? I said Haya was a bastard and we went to saying Lu stank like we don't know what and now Rinjjang is painting her nails a strictly non-regulation shade with piano polish?"

"We were working on the assumption that Haya was always a bastard, Sey," Rinzen mumbled in intense concentration. Another smear of polish bled over the side of her finger and Lukas moved the table out of her arms' reach just in time to avoid a table flip. Rinzen settled for slamming the brush forcefully down onto the table. Turning to Sey, Lukas flipped his ponytail and sniggered at the expression of disgust plastering itself across the girl's face.

"He's a crazy bastard and we should smack him," he smiled at Seychelle, who looked at him with eyebrows askew. "Before you ask, of course he knew before hand. You know he's busy as all get-out so obviously he wouldn't come for an impulse visit with no real reason. He even made you up before hand and you're just saying he knew about this whole-" (Lukas gestured) "-now?"

"I know," Seychelle growled, flinging herself at the pile of pillows heaped at the head of the bed. "Wish he'd give forewarning so I could go off-radar for a couple days instead of getting sucked into a publicity shitstorm."

Rinzen snorted. "Haya and forewarning don't belong in the same sentence. Haya and shitstorm, though..."

She trailed off suggestively and Seychelle sat up on the bed, running a hand through her mussed hair. "You aren't taking it, are you."

Rinzen snorted. "Don't like people, and I really still don't see the worth of money. If you want something, why don't you just take it?"

Lukas tipped his head to one side. "I'm... I don't know, Sey. I could always do with the extra cash, but once you go live, everything you do will go public."

"Including your sex life and if you read while taking dumps?"

Lukas blinked at Rinzen, who calmly blinked straight back before drying her nails with a squint.

"Gods, you're a weirdo, Rin," Seychelle muttered.

A great, sudden crash outside had Seychelle rolling forward off the bed and springing into a defensive stance. Lukas rushed to the balcony, hastily unlocking it and leaning out over the railing to see what was going on. His eyesight wasn't the absolute best- Rinzen's third floor room wasn't helping-, but he could make out the white-haired boy and the moody tall-and-dark wrestling in the quad with his redhead companion desperately trying to separate them.

"Oh, come on," Seychelle growled. "Seriously, that skinny little toothpick is going to get dumped on his ass."

The white-haired boy summarily dumped the aforementioned toothpick on his ass, but the scrapper got up and launched himself forward again, all thought of technique flying out the proverbial window.

"Seriously?" Rinzen deadpanned, cocking her head to one side and squinting at them. Lukas blinked and both she and Sey had popped down to the quad. As he turned from the balcony, he saw the super young freshie girl peering out over her own balcony. They made eye-contact and she seemed startled; she swung around quickly and hurried inside, eyes still widened in surprise. Lukas really, really hoped that she didn't have a case of 'senpai notice me' as he dashed out of Rinzen's room and down the staircase to the ground floor.

By the time he got to the fight Dom had given up on 'separating' and had instead backed off to allow the fight to simmer down by itself. Seychelle had also given up on separating and had instead gone ahead and joined right in, landing a perfect spinning kick to one of the boys' face. Heath rolled with the blow, spitting slightly bloody saliva as he stumbled to one side. Almost too fast to see, he pivoted back and swung a backhand at Seychelle, who barely dodged out of the way before Kole threw himself at her in a mess of flying limbs. She ducked, but was clipped across the cheekbone with one of his fists; Seychelle dropped and swept his legs out from under him, and Kole fell hard on his back. Lukas had to praise his resilience, however, when he flipped right back up and rushed headlong at Heath, who threw another precise punch at Seychelle. Seychelle kicked Kole hard in the back, shoving him into Heath's punch.

They met in the centre with an audible smack, and the furiously enraged Kole managed, by some freak accident, to land an actual punch of some effectiveness to Heath's jaw. The white-haired boy's head snapped back, and he grew very still. Seychelle visibly perked up, and backed off immediately, sniffing and swiping at her bloodied nose with the back of her hand. Unconsciously, she held the other arm out to herd the redhead away from what her instincts were telling her was a disaster in the making. Lukas blanched. Sey wasn't stupid but she was a risk-taker, and if she was backing off then he had better not get close too. Alarm bells were ringing with him too- he'd worked with enough dangerous, volatile animals to know when one of them was about to explode. He was getting that sense now.

The freshie girl from the balcony, Ellie, trotted out of the stairway. Lukas made gestures to shoo her back up them.

"Don't," he said rather abruptly. "Don't get close. He's gonna explode and it won't be pretty."

She stopped, blinked, and nodded curtly, retreating to what he felt was a safe distance but not leaving totally. There was a tell-tale spark in her eyes that bespoke an intense curiosity and Lukas hoped it wouldn't get her into a sticky situations that she wouldn't be able to wiggle out of. Rinzen had disappeared off to somewhere else as Lukas felt a shiver run up his spine. Kole was still in close quarters with Heath and Lukas had to tell himself that barely seconds had passed. Heath slowly tilted his head down to stare Kole in the eye. Lukas shivered again, a bad feeling creeping over him. Heath was scarily still and quiet for someone who had just been socked in the jaw and- was he glowing?

He stopped beside Ellie and saw her gulp out of the corner of his eye. Heath's face slowly transformed from absolute blankness as a creepy little smile appeared on his face.

Oh dear. He was absolutely murderous.

When Ellie became aware of what was happening again, she was lying on the floor with a dazed senior sprawled beside her. Coughing slightly because of the dust floating in the air, she dusted herself off and got to her feet. Her ears rung, and her visions flashed with negatives of a white flash and a black blur in its centre, hazing green and red over the normal colours of what she saw. The disconcerting blur shifted every time she blinked and it was driving her insane. Lukas coughed and sputtered a bit before levering into a seated position against the wall, shaking his head to rid himself of the ringing in his ears.

"What just...?" he muttered, bracing himself against the wall and sliding into a precarious standing posture. Ellie shrugged. She was at as great a loss as the older blonde.

The situation in the quad was rather less than self-explanatory. Ellie could really find no logical reason for the appearance of a crater that had blown out a solid ten foot radius of paving stones and grass. Kole was nowhere to be found, and she really hoped he hadn't been obliterated. That would be very awkward to deal with, even more so than having to explain what exactly happened to the quad in the first place. Movement in the corner of her eye alerted her to the fact that Seychelle had gotten up and unceremoniously slung the half-dazed Dom over her shoulder, before trudging into the stairwell with a huff. She was in no mood to deal with anything else, and her face was probably already swelling up. Ellie winced sympathetically. The senior would have a doozy of a bruise to cover the next day. Lukas exhaled and pinched the bridge of his nose, centring himself before taking a slightly wobbly step in the direction of the crater. Ellie picked through smoking rubble after him as he gained momentum and dodged carefully around the bits of debris and burnt grass.

Heath blinked at them as they approached him. His knuckles were slightly cracked and bloody, and he looked at them in confusion, shaking the dust and stone chips from his now dusty-beige hair.

"What just happened?" he asked. Ellie shrugged and made a face that said you asking me?

Lukas looked at Heath as if he really couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Are you serious?"

Heath nodded, a frown creasing his forehead. "Really, what happened?"

Lukas threw his hands in the air. "What- what even? I don't know, you tell me!"

"What?' Heath's expression of bamboozlement grew even more incredulous. "Hey, hey, don't look at me, I am so not responsible-"

Ellie took the opportunity to pull quite firmly on Heath's sleeve and indicate the largely mangled quad.

"Oh," he said in a very small voice. "Oh, crap."

Later, Heath revealed that he'd completely forgotten what they were fighting about in the first place. Kole, whom Rinzen had popped out of the way of the brunt of Heath's freak-out, looked at him disbelievingly out of his un-bruised eye before screeching like a little girl as Dom swabbed the grazes running up his arm with a liberal dose of antiseptic. Rinzen plastered a black bandaid with little silver cross patterns over the scrapes on her cheek, before scowling and turning to fix her Heath-damaged manicure. Seychelle, draped over Rinzen's bed, allowed Ellie to hand her bruise balm and band-aids and made fun of both of them from afar. Lukas snickered at them, and poked Ellie between the shoulder blades. She flapped at hand at him and stuck her tongue out.

"Are you guys taking the offer?"

"Alright, who's taking the offer?"

The atmosphere, Mars mused, was very different the second time around. As usual, Lukas had an arm slung over Seychelle, but this time Rinzen leaned against him on the other side, applying a holographic top-coat to her black nails. Kole and Dom sandwiched Heath between the two of them, and the dark haired boy occassionally exchanged shoves and pinches with his light-haired companion. Dom rolled his eyes and looked at them with an exasperated smile. Ellie crossed her arms and nudged Dom, making mocking motions at the other two boys. Aurea smiled at Chiaro and waved him over, sensing and encouraged by the positive atmosphere floating off the boys and gals. Still dragging Charlotte by one hand, she plopped down beside Ellie and beginning an animated conversation with both her and Dom on her other side. Claire quickly took a seat beside Seychelle, slapping her bag down on the empty seat beside her to deter the ever leering Xander if she had to.

However, the tensions became palpable as they quieted and Coco Starr rubbed her lime-gloved hands together in anticipation. Seychelle took it as a sign to drop her forms unceremoniously on the table and kick her boots up as a sign of make me, sucker. Okay, maybe it was more M-rated than that, but it was probably better not to elaborate. Lukas followed suit and Rinzen produced her stack and a pen, scratching through a final line of text before presenting the contract for submission.

Chiaro bit his bottom lip briefly before pulling out his pile of papers. For his parents, he told himself, for his parents; he still wasn't sure if he was making the right decision. Aurea glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, a glance which morphed into a quizzical look. Chiaro sighed and sincerely hoped that Aurea hadn't taken the offer. A lurching in his stomach fueled the unease riddling his thoughts. He didn't want her pulled into this mess, since he had a bad feeling he'd be doing enough screwing up for both of them.

Seychelle glanced at Lukas and Rinzen, who both glanced at each other and covertly eye-brow wiggled at each other. Sey shoved her papers forward and smirked at the others. Lukas grinned and Rinzen mouthed something weird and morbid about what they could actually do for her if they really wanted her on the show. She scoffed. Fat chance she was going to get sucked into reality television.

Claire fiddled with the tassel on her sling bag and bit her lip. Mars glanced around, locking eyes with Heath for a second before forcefully shoving her papers forward. Ellie and Dom followed suit, followed with a bang by the ever belligerent Kole. Charlotte felt her insides twist with conflicting emotions. Sure, this was her ticket, but she had this sneaking feeling like the train she'd boarded was headed off the side of a mountain, one way trip.

A/N: Aigoo it took a long time to write this ^-^;; Sorry for taking a long time to update~