Kathkitty's NaNo is Done! *cheers*

[Rikku]

I want to read it. But I should think you already know that. xD

[Kathleen]

Alright then. Um. =D I shall post it. Keep in mind it is incredibly silly and random, though, and I did a cursory glance to take care of the worst spelling mistakes, but.. it's basically unedited still. =D

SPOILER: Click to show

Chapter One

The dim shadows striped the streets in dull shades of grey, a dreary counterpart to the dull sky of something that might once have been midnight black. It was more like stained grey washed with the bleached stripes of light pollution. Inside the shadows, numerous kind of creatures from a child’s nightmare slunk about.

The city before dawn. A dangerous place to be. If you had any common sense at all, that is.

Kanza moved quickly, dodging and turning, running with an equal, careful pace through the grimy alleyways. His face, dark in the no-light, was grimly set, his expression fierce. His clothes were sooty, stained, the beautiful ruffled white-lace shirt now more black than white.

That was a pity, really. That shirt had looked very nice, a while ago.

The dim sounds of street traffic reached his ears as he paused, slumping against a wall lined with shops. They were all closed—signs propped up in dirty glass windows proclaimed that. Some even had shades. If they did, they were drawn tight against the impending blackness that was night in Midward. It wasn’t always safe to be about at night. Anyway, that’s what the pamphlets said. The little paper ones with the red stickies printed on hot pink paper.

A faint tinkling, like that of a bottle breaking on the sidewalk, caught Kanza’s attention, and he looked up. Looked up being a little of an understatement; more like some invisible string yanked his chin up sharply.

A blue-skinned boy was picking his way across the street, limping slightly. His profile was a shadowy-smudge in the darkness, lit here and there by points of light from the hangnail-moon. The boy jumped through puddles of moonlight that collected on the street, in tiny pockets and holes in the pitted tarmac.

Kanza’s eyes narrowed. He straightened, still breathing hard. It had been a long night; he was tired. He glanced behind him, into the window of an antique’s shop. Well, that was what the sign proclaimed it was, anyway. In actuality, it looked more like a shop full of dusty, mouldy things Grandma keeps in her kitchen drawers.

But was there anything useful in there? That was the real question. Kanza strained to see past the thick layer of dust coating the window, searching for something, anything. It wasn’t worth breaking the window, otherwise.

Another noise. Kanza turned so fast he was a blur in the air, one hand flying up. A silver blade was clasped gently in it.

The blue boy’s eyes went briefly very wide, just inches from Kanza’s own. He was wearing a dark pendant that swung crazily against his chest as he leaped.

Kanza hit the ground rolling, with an undignified ‘oomph’ as all the air was knocked out of him. The blue boy was on his chest, beating down with tiny stick hands. It hurt. Kanza could feel a hundred different bruises blossoming on his dark skin.

“Ow, ow.” He struck out. The knife flashed silver. The blue boy wailed, ducked sideways. Kanza struggled to his feet, doubled-over. In a flash, before he could fully straighten, the blue boy was upon him, attacking with redoubled effort.

“Ow, begone, cursed demon!” Kanza howled, hopping up and down on one foot (the other having just been stomped on). It was not a very dignified picture.

The blue boy paused, cocking his head to one side. His small, squat features were quirked in a puzzled expression. Dull grey eyes—like pebbles—stared out from under a thick fringe of greenish hair.

“She wants you,” he whispered, his voice a dull rasp. He started to back away slowly from the hopping, cursing Kanza, who wasn’t paying any attention whatsoever. The demon boy watched him still with those wide pebble eyes. “She wants you, and she’ll get you.”

Then he turned in a second and fled up the dark, silent street, past the street-sign, silvery in the moonlight. Main Street, it read, because they are all always Main Streets.

It was a while before there was any more sound on this particular Main Street. Kanza was still cursing under his breath as he finally straightened, his knife disappearing beneath his clothes. He limped to the antique shop window and surveyed himself in it.

A round, babyish-innocent face looked back at him, chocolate eyes wide. A tiny cut above his eyebrow streamed blood, and his cheek looked swollen. He touched it gingerly, then yanked his hand away, yelping.

With a bitter sigh, Kanza turned, looking down at his shirt. There were two rips in it, and it seemed to have incorporated a lot of gravel into its weave. It looked like the shirt had had a nice time gorging on tarmac.

“That makes one of us,” Kanza muttered, brushing his stinging hands off on his jeans. He looked up, surveying the once more silent and empty street. Nothing stirred this time. The wind rustled a paper bag that skipped along the opposite sidewalk, but otherwise there was no sign of anyone or anything.

Kanza nodded to himself with satisfaction in what he hoped was a noble and slightly-pained way. It didn’t quite cut the butter, but he got credit for trying. Anyway, he should have.

The streets were dark as he headed home. Well, dark-ish. Actually, they were a sort of murky grey-white, the kind of colourlessness that darkness brings. But that didn’t matter to Kanza, who was occupied with other matters. Namely, getting home. His legs were starting to feel like lead-filled cement by the time he dragged himself around the bend, ending up in front of the towering stucco apartment buildings.

They rose up a good thirty feet into the air, astonishing in their ugliness. It was just about possible to imagine something uglier. Perhaps. Cutting it very, very fine.

Kanza limped around to the side stairway, a long flight of flat concrete slabs connected with iron bars. It wasn’t exactly a fashion accessory. But then, neither were the wilting bushes stuck along the sides of the building. They looked like bad Halloween decorations placed there by mistake and long forgotten come July of the next year.

The door of #14 was peeling paint and looked like one good kick would send it into splinters. A grubby mat had been placed outside. The word ‘elcome’ could just be made out through the grime; the place where the ‘W’ had once resided was missing, eaten by some lonely racoon several years ago.

Kanza didn’t even bother with the key in his pocket; the door was always open, anyway. He turned the handle, opening it up into a yawning black pit. The faint smell of mould and cigarettes wafted out. Kanza wrinkled his nose, stepping inside and pulling the door shut behind him. It turned out this was not perhaps the best idea he’d had in a while; it was as black as fresh tar inside and about as easy to see through.

Groping along with both hands and trying not to think of all the horrors that were waiting to trip him, Kanza inched along the far wall. He was beginning to have second thoughts about closing the door. Actually, he was having second thoughts about everything. There was something very warm trickling down the side of his cheek, and he rather suspected it might be red coloured. And salty.

The bathroom mirror—when he finally located its place of residence and a light switch—confirmed his suspicions.

The bruises were starting to appear, also, purpling red and green along the side of one cheekbone. He had a black eye that was more red than black, and his hair looked like it had had a close encounter with a gravel plant.

Hmmm. He really did need to rethink this lifestyle. He was going to get funny looks at school tomorrow. Not that he didn’t usually get funny looks; but this might be worse. The principle could be involved. He didn’t need that. The whispers of ‘demon boy’ were bad enough; he didn’t need Mom getting involved, too.

Thinking of his mom, Kanza winced, then carefully turned away from the bathroom mirror. He’d left her safely sleeping, but with Corazon Feliz, one never knew…

His heart was pounding as he traversed the silent hallway, a sheer terror like that he had never once experienced while hunting demons finding its way into his heart like some kind of cold vice grip.

There was absolutely no sound coming from her bedroom. No, Kanza thought, don’t let her have gone off…don’t let her have woken up while I was gone…

The bedroom was all shadowy shapes and misplaced darkness vying for a safe space as the light from the hallway invaded it. The bed was at the farthest corner of the room, still hidden in darkness. A breath escaped Kanza as he took it in, noting the still form of his mom under the covers. Thank God. It would have been a disaster on the order of carnivorous pigeons if she’d left. Carnivorous pigeons are a very big disaster. Really.

Kanza tip-toed back to the living room, past the grand piano that occupied the whole right half; a very small television set, cabinet, and sofa had been crammed into the other side, looking forlorn and very much displaced. It was clear the piano was lording it over them all. He glanced at it for a minute, and his fingers automatically jumped for their positions on the keys, itching to play. He shot a look out the window. The sky was greying to pink, the first flushes of dawn lighting up the horizon. He couldn’t play now. That would be insane. Half the neighbourhood would be calling to complain. Very loudly. About the very loud noise that had just woken them. There was irony in that situation, but it was difficult to find unless you looked carefully.

Regretfully, he continued on past the giant instrument, to the cabinet next to the sofa, which was about to assume its role as part-time bed.

It took Kanza the better part of about a minute to toss his clothes somewhere creative, find pyjamas, and collapse into the sofa, yanking a pillow over his head to shut out the creeping rays of brilliant sunlight.

The digital alarm clock resting on top of the TV said the time was currently two a.m.

Perfect. Exactly four hours of sleep. Provided there was some serious jamming going on come morning.

It was with these thoughts that Kanza, demon hunter, closed his eyes, and drifted off to an exhausted sleep.





Chapter Two
Dawn broke gloomily and slowly, like a lazy cat yawning and stretching after a long nap. Pigeons on rooftops round the city opened bleary eyes and were promptly eaten by not-so-lazy cats.

Smoke coughed up factory chimneys; cars honked; petrol fumes stung the eyes of those stupid—or poor—enough to walk in Midward.

The city came to life in an agony of creaks and groans, snappings and poppings, night life replaced by the more common life of day.

Kanza watched it all in the reflection of the bathroom mirror, while dabbing at various bruises and cuts with iodine. The mirror directly faced the window, thus making it easy to see both outside the apartment, and his distinctly worse-for-wear face.

He was hurrying, swearing quietly to himself as the injuries stung afresh. He tried to do so with a heroic expression, however. He had earned these injuries, and he would wear them like a badge of honour, a symbol of pride. He, Kanza, was better than any of those pathetic children in that pathetic institution they called High School; what use did he have for universities, anyway? He would was a demon-hunter, the best of the best. He was one of the city’s protectors; one who would watch over all those ridiculous common citizens, going about their muddled everyday lives.

Kanza only went to school because he had to; his mom insisted. His mom. That reminded Kanza. He turned away from the mirror, exciting the bathroom and moving with his usual catlike grace to his Corazon’s bedroom.

The door was open, though, and it was unoccupied, the bed a mass of tangled blankets, and the blinds opened clumsily, so that one side dropped nearly to the window sill, and the other was up as high as it could go. It looked like it would be screaming for help if it had a voice. Or merely whimpering pathetically; depending on how long it’d been up there.

The tell-tale scent of freshly-brewing coffee wafted out from the direction of the kitchen, drawing Kanza toward it with a magnetic pull.

His mom was standing at the counter, humming to herself, the coffee-maker turned on and doing its work to make the Sustenance of Life. Or so say coffee-drinkers, anyway. Those who have never tasted this divine substance—or, heaven forbid, are allergic to it!—beg to differ, but usually they are far outnumbered, and found in dark, abandoned buildings, their mouths stuffed and gagged with Coffee House napkins, surrounded by steaming cups of coffee.

“Hey, Mom, how’s it going?” Kanza sidled into the kitchen casually, casting a sidelong glance at his mom. She appeared perfectly normal this morning, happy, even, her eyes bright, mouth turned up in a smile as she hummed a tune he didn’t recognise. She was wearing grey slacks and a pristine purple blouse, both neatly pressed and obviously ironed. But looks could be deceiving, as Kanza was quite well aware. Never judge a book by its cover. Well, usually. Most of the time. Those books that have good covers are the exception. Don’t count on it.

“Kanza, sweet, have you brought back flowers again?” She turned toward him, beaming and holding out her hands.

“Um, flowers?”

“Yes, darling. Weren’t you just out in the garden?” Corazon’s pretty face fell into a frown. She was beautiful, there was no doubting it, in a dark, Mexican way. Her glossy hair fell past the small of her back in thick waves that reminded Kanza of the ocean. There was not a single wrinkle to be found in her dark skin, though she was certainly old enough to merit them. Kanza had inherited her looks, he knew; he shared the same charm, the same graceful way of walking. It was nice. To him.

“We live in an apartment now, Mom, there’s no garden, remember?” Kanza said, trying to keep his tone cheerful as he moved toward the coffee-maker. But his heart was already sinking. It was one of those days again.

“Oh, darling, don’t touch that! It’s hot, no, no, hot burn.”

Kanza was interrupted in his reach for the coffee maker by slender hands that grabbed his wrist. He halted, looking around slowly. Corazon was frowning in an almost angry way.

“How many times have I told you not to touch that?” she demanded, in the tone of one talking to a five year old. Kanza answered easily, but his mood was already black as the night, and he was wondering how he would face the day.

“Yes, Mom.”

“That’s right, then. Hmm.” And she moved off, smiling to herself, dusting her hands off on her slacks. She left the kitchen, oblivious apparently to the coffee that was done.

Kanza waited until she was safely gone before pouring himself a cup. He made a quick detour through the living room to pick up his backpack, and met Corazon there again. She was sitting at the piano, a dim smile on her face. The lid was closed, though, and her hands were folded in her lap.

She didn’t look up as Kanza collected his backpack. He looked at her once, trying to judge just how bad it was today. It didn’t seem safe for him to go to school with her like this. On these days—the ones where she thought he was much younger—she was bound to do something incredibly stupid. The last time he’d made the mistake of leaving her alone on this kind of day, she’d almost burned the house down. Kanza still hadn’t figured out why. It had something to do with a cat. Or roses. One of the two, anyway.

He hesitated in the entranceway to the living room, debating.

“Mom,” he began slowly, “Mom, are we going somewhere today?”

“Hmmm?” She looked up, frowning. “Kanza, why aren’t you gone already? You’re going to be late to school! Where you out again last night, too? What’s all those bruises?” she advanced on him, her face suddenly sharp and attentive. “Come here, let me look at those.”

Kanza almost choked over his relief.

“You’re right, I’m going to be late. Bye!” He dodged her quick hands, making a break for the door, still clutching his coffee. A little late, he realised he probably shouldn’t take the mug. But it was too late, now. He’d have to ditch it in the bushes somewhere and come back for it on his way home.

He made it out the front door, calling a last, “Bye, love ya, Mom!’ over his shoulder and slamming the door behind him.

The morning air was brisk and cool, filled with the mournful cheeping of birds navigating the smog filled sky. The bushes around the apartment building and the railing of the stairs was wet with clinging dewdrops, and a fine mist hung in the air in front of Kanza as he descended the steps.

He walked quickly. It was one of those days that merited walking quickly. There was just something about it. It probably wasn’t the honking cars that drove past at regular intervals, taking the turns of streetcorners way too fast; it probably also wasn’t the early-morning walkers—those who had dogs on leashes or newspapers (not usually on leashes), or little kids they were walking to school.

Kanza considered himself lucky that he walked. He wouldn’t have taken the bus even if the sky had opened up and rained gallons. Kanza didn’t like the bus much—it was stuffy and hot and there were always a lot of people there. He didn’t like people. He was the solitary type. He liked walking. Walking was good exercise.

The flat stretch of concrete sidewalk in front of Midward High School (whose founders apparently had boundless creativity and imagination when it came to names) was crowded with the masses in all their glory: Midward’s population of high school-age children. It was spectacular.

Kanza swept back his hair, adjusted his backpack strap, and sauntered slowly in through the carved arches decorated in a pathetic attempt at school patriotism.

There were some stares. There always were. Okay, a lot of stares. He would admit that. It was pleasing. The way their eyes flickered sideways, their conversations broke of mid-way, a falter…eyes slid away again, heads turned, conversations resumed. But tighter this time, the laughter forced.

It pleased him. They were talking about him now, noting his differences, his oddities. Whispers.

“Demon-boy.”

“He’s one of them you know.”

“Really?”

“Yes, a demon-hunter.”

“Oh.”

He walked with his head held high, proud, strutting in. His backpack was slung carelessly off of one shoulder, and he knew he cut a dashing figure, in his fresh, crisp white shirt with the lace at the collar, open to display the golden cross lying in the hollow between his collarbones.

The lacy shirt would have looked ridiculous on anyone else. Girlish, even, maybe. It looked good on him. Fancy, in an old fashioned sort of way.

The hallways inside the giant building—that apparently supported learning but really seemed to be more into supporting the loss of self-esteem and the reality of cliques—were crowded. They always were, at seven-thirty a.m. on a weekday. Lockers slammed, books met with the floor. Tears were shed as the not-so-popular were ridiculed; laughs were heard. Fingers were smashed in locker doors; makeup was hastily applied to the cheeks of girls to prevent them from the absolute disaster of showing up to Biology without a fine covering of powder.

First period was one of those wonderful times in life when time seemed to slow, stretching like saltwater taffy in the hands of a five-year-old.

Kanza liked to think of it like the peppermint kind. He sat at his desk in a sort of half-daze, staring at the wall behind the teacher’s desk until he’d memorised every bit of it. It wasn’t very interesting. The whispers and covert glances he got were way more intriguing.

“Just look at him…who beat him up?”

“Beat him up? The demons, obviously! Like, hello, do you even watch the news?”

“I heard…”

“Well, there was an attack on Friday…”

“I know, Mom said she wasn’t going to let me go to Claire’s party because of it!”

“Tell me about it. Dad says the city’s going to the rats. He says we’re going to have to move—”

“—going to the demons, you mean—”

“Insane; did you see the newspaper, that headline? There’s been more murders. More demon murders.”

“What’s the government doing? We need protection!”

“Well, duh, hello! Look at him.”

“—and he’s not even old enough, I can believe it.”

“—age doesn’t matter when you’re saving the world, Raine.”

“…someone’s got to…”

He enjoyed the whispers. He slouched in his chair, running a hand through his dark curls, doodling on his paper. He paid little if any attention to the teacher, who droned on and on, pacing the room and gesturing vaguely at the blackboard.

Kanza wasn’t interested in taking in any information. He was here because his mom made him. She believed in education. In her clear-thinking moments, anyway.

He did it for her, because he needed to keep her quiet. If he upset her, word would get out, and he would most certainly not be allowed to pursue his chosen career path. He didn’t know of any demon hunters who would take him in so young; you were supposed to be eighteen to join, anyway. What he did was somewhat illegal, though not really since he practised it only for personal use; in other words, he wasn’t employed by the government, like most demon-hunters were. It was a fine line, but he walked it well, with a casual, jaunty air and a spring in his step. Kanza was unique. He was drenched in uniqueness; he radiated it. Demon hunting was what he’d been born to do, and he had no intention of stopping.

It seemed an eternity of moving slowly through the crammed hallways, the loudly talking teenagers, the boring classes; finally, the last bell rang. There was a scurry for the door.

Kanza got up slowly from his chair in the last class, which was math—because some people seemed to believe that children could learn geometry and algebra while counting the ticking of the clock to the end of school—and sauntered slowly toward the doorway.

A girl pushed in front of him; he recognised her. Her name was Angeline. She was one of those stereotypical girls, as flat and flavourless as cardboard. She might as well have been cardboard, for all the emotion she showed at any time. Kanza vaguely remembered seeing her around. She was too flat to really know—and besides, Kanza rarely associated with anyone in this hideous place—but he thought he knew who she was well enough.

He gave her a charming smile, holding the door open for her. She blinked up at him, and he noticed she didn’t wear makeup. Odd, that, most of the other girls were plastered in the stuff, thicker than wall paste.

“Er, thanks,” the girl mumbled. She bent her head down, her hair falling over her face, books hugged to her chest. She pushed past Kanza, who stood gallantly still holding the door open.

He raised one eyebrow in mild surprise; it was unusual for a girl not to stop to talk to him. It was interesting to note that he was not particularly disturbed however; he simply shrugged, and followed the last stragglers out of the classroom.

It was raining outside the building, in the dim, dull fashion of a Wednesday. Only it was Tuesday. Weather listens to no one.

Walking home in the rain was something Kanza enjoyed, at any rate. Everything smelled like wet concrete (a very sophisticated sort of smell) and damp moss. Midward came alive in the rain.

Streetlamps shone their erie glow onto the street, puddles of orange lighting up scrapes and cracks in the pavement.

Kanza walked briskly, head down, backpack slung awkwardly to keep the most rain off as possible. He liked rain, but not getting wet. It ruined his clothes.

It was just like the sort of person Kanza was to not hear them until they were virtually on top of him.

He’d been thinking about vaguely interesting things—namely what shirt he was going to wear out tonight—when he became aware that he was surrounded by fifteen-year-old girls.

It was in his nature to become immediately smooth and suave, but, being still more than a little human, his first instinct was to panic. There were so many of them, and they were so glittery.

He took a couple short breaths as a blonde one passed him. She had very short hair and piercings.

“Hey, look who it is!” The dark-haired one’s voice was shrill, and it immediately attracted the attention of her peers.

Rain dripped from the traffic light. The walk sign was stubbornly red at the street corner that Kanza found himself at, surrounded on all sides by teenage girls.

They were obviously waiting for the light, no more, no less. It didn’t stop the urge to bolt.

“Er, how may I help you, my lovely ladies?” Kanza smoothed his hair back with a hand slick from the rain. There were wide eyed stares.

“Oooh, he’s even more handsome than I thought!”

“Demon-boy. We’ve seen you,” the blonde crooned, leaning closer. A car honked,; Kanza nearly fell off the side of the curb.

It was suddenly very dark for a three o’clock afternoon. And very misty. Difficult to see.

“Well, wouldn’t you know it.”

The crosswalk sign had turned to green. Kanza extracted himself from a lace clad limb. He admired her fashion sense, but not her style.

“Ladies, we must cross…”

He was sadly slightly too late, however, because they had really gotten a good look at him now, and there was no going anywhere.

“Ohmygosh he is cute!” Squeals. Uh-oh, panic, thought Kanza, a trifle weakly. He was not prepared for this.

“And he hunts demons. Kills them. He’s practically a criminal, though, I heard, ’cause he’s so young.”

“You mean a prodigy.” Blondie again, smirking, her lipstick running in the rain that slid down her face.

“Yes, a prodigy, a pianist, too.” Kanza winked at her, hoping she would relinquish her grip on his backpack strap. He could always drop it and run, but it wouldn’t look so good. And besides, there was something heavy on one of his boots, and he really didn’t want to lose those. They’d cost him a fortune, used.

“Oh, look at the time!” Blondie squealed suddenly, gaping down at her wrist like a fish. Her mouth opened and closed a couple times, and suddenly the whole group was still, looking uncertainly around each other. Now that they had stopped moving, Kanza could easily count them. There were five total. Not so much, but they’d certainly seemed like a lot—hundreds—when they were being crazy like that.

He made a wise decision and seized his chance, darting off into the street. The crosswalk had long ago turned back to red, and there were squealing tyres as cars slid on the wet blacktop to avoid him. He was bent double, gasping for breath when he reached the other side of the street, and very wet.

He could hear faint cries of unhappiness from the other side, where he’d left the girls. He didn’t look back; shouldering his backpack at a jaunty angle, he commenced sauntering down the wet and abandoned street.

Bushes lining the front walks of houses dripped water in a steady stream. Puddles sloshed their way toward the gutter.

It was one of those dismal days that makes moods sink lower than a drowned fish. Consequentially, Kanza was in high spirits. Some people just cannot be made sense of.

He was whistling as he strode purposefully up the apartment stairs. Even the fact that his clothes were wet couldn’t dampen his mood.

The flat walkway that stretched past dozens of closed apartment doors was slick with rain; there were small lakes in some of the deeper dents.

Kanza neatly dodged them in the infuriating way that certain people have, not getting a speck of mud on his clothes.

He tried the door, and was momentarily bemused, finding it locked. His mom must’ve done that. It had been a while since he’d used a key.

He was fumbling for it in his pocket, the backpack weighing down on his arm and making him stoop to one side, when a voice spoke, startling him so that he jumped, dropping the newly retrieved key into a puddle.

“What’re you doing out here, boy?”

Kanza turned slowly. Very slowly. A man stood leaning against the railing. It looked rather dangerous; he could easily have tumbled over and fallen two flights to a broken neck. Then again, by the looks of him, he might just have somersaulted over the railing, flew two flights, and bounded off into the dreary afternoon. He was long-legged and lean, with that rangy look of a half starved, but very fast, cat. His tan beard covered most of his face.

“This is where I live,” Kanza said, as politely as he could, considering he’d just been called ‘boy’. That rankled.

The man raised one eyebrow.

“Not here, boy. Here.” He made a gesture with his arms, encompassing the air between them. Kanza stared.

“Excuse me,” he began, “but I don’t think—”

“Didn’t expect you to.” A harsh, barking laugh that sounded like someone choking on gravel. Lots of it. “Just let me tell you something, boy. This business with the demons: you’re getting yourself in way over your head.” A deep, penetrating stare that had Kanza taking a step back and then immediately bristling, annoyed with himself.

“I don’t think you really know what you’re talking about,” he replied loftily. The man rolled his eyes.

“Be careful, little boy. Be careful. The world’s not such a pleasant place as you’ve been led to believe.”

“I haven’t been led to believe anything; why d’you think I fight demons?” Kanza gave his own matching gravel-choking laugh. It sounded more like a dying car engine. But no matter. It’s the thought that counts.

The man raised his eyebrows, leaned forward, arms still gripping the rail. “It’s a changing world out there, boy. Midward’s not going to be safe for long. Those demons you fought—they’re toys. Little things, pests. Mosquitos, locusts. Nothing more. You’re not ready for this. Trust me on it. Find yourself somewhere safe to be; you’re not going to like what’s coming. She’s found you, and she won’t rest until you’re dead, angel’s son.” He nodded slowly, oblivious to the growing irritation on Kanza’s face.

“And who’re you to lord it like this?” Kanza burst out, startling the man, who looked up. Then he smiled—a hunting smile.

“Oh, no-one in particular. In fact, you needn’t have ever seen me. Just remember: I warned you.”

He jerked his head toward the stairs knowingly, then turned and slowly sauntered past Kanza. He was going the wrong way, Kanza noted belatedly; not toward, but away from, the stairs.

A drop suddenly fell into Kanza’s eyes from the overhand above the apartment door, and by the time he’d blinked it away, the man was also gone, vanished into seemingly thin air. Or he may have somersaulted over the railing, flew two flights, and bounded off into the dreary afternoon. Either way, it was really a moot point, because he was gone, and after a moment, Kanza turned, inserted the key into the lock with shaky fingers, and went inside, closing the door firmly on the moody, foreboding day.

Angel’s son, indeed. That man was a raving lunatic. Completely mad. Definitely should be locked up.

***


Chapter Three (or is it two? You know, I don’t do chapters very well. I did not count this as part of my wordcount, incidentally)

Black or green? Kanza twisted around the mirror, trying to see his back. He ended up with an elbow in the sink, doing some sort of splits.

“Ow, darn it.”

Probably black. It looked better.

It had been his own idea to wear the tie, and he rather liked it. It wasn’t any old tie, of course: a bowtie. It looked simply dashing with the new shirt, a stiff-collared one with long-cuffed sleeves. Above it, his face looked back at him out of the mirror, dark and serious, big eyes wide. They were always wide, technically. They gave him an innocent, charming expression. It suited him.

Kanza turned, running a hand over his already-smooth curls, and checked the window. Hmm. Not dark enough yet. The chill blue of evening was only just beginning to fade. Perfect, piano-playing time.

In the manner of one long-accustomed to walking in silky black pants and looking like he was going for an evening out at the eighteen-and-over club, Kanza exited the bathroom and made his way into the living room. There was banging coming from the kitchen, and he paused momentarily to frown at the doorway.

“Mom?”

“Cheese!” came the answer, high and shrill. Kanza winced, and continued on to the piano. He’d let her work it out; she always did, anyway. He’d put away most of the breakables. He thought. The only thing she could possibly do was smash a couple tea mugs. And that was okay; they needed new ones anyway. He’d have to think about taking that extra job at the grocery store, though; they were going to be worrying about more things than having old tea mugs soon if he didn’t. But demon-hunting—especially for a ‘prodigy’—paid well; very, very well. It was demeaning to think of working in a supermarket for minimum wage like a normal sixteen-year-old. Kanza shuddered, lifting the lid of his grand piano. The dark wood gleamed in the light from the sole lamp—a standing one with a glass dome patterned with butterflies, standing in the corner.

Kanza’s fingers twitched, and he mentally chided them. He bent down, sitting down on the piano stool. He ran his fingers lovingly over the keys, admiring them as he never ceased to. The piano, admittedly, did have a certain charm to it—in fact, if looked at objectively, it reminded one rather a lot of Kanza himself. They were like two halves of a whole: meant to be together.

There was the sound of something very hard hitting a wall, and then from the kitchen the sound of splintering glass. Kanza winced, and set his hands down on the keys.

The opening notes of Brahms’ Lullaby floated out to the accompaniment of breaking dishes.

Seconds later, however, everything had become silent, and there was just the music. Kanza’s fingers slowly moved up the keys, touching each note softly, giving it what it wanted. He’d picked the Lullaby for a reason: it was his mom’s favourite. He’d hoped it would calm her down. Sometimes, music just further incited the utter abandonment of sanity. Others (he’d been hoping it was this, obviously) it calmed her, brought her back from wherever she’d gone inside her own head.

A moment passed, then Corazon came slowly out of the kitchen. She looked tired, her clothes that were so day at the office and yet had not seen the inside of one in over two years, rumpled. She crossed the room, and sat down on the sofa, folding her hands in her lap, her face attentive. Kanza watched her out of the corner of his eye, never turning his head. He played on.

It was Corazon Fey who had taught Kanza to play the piano. She was a concert pianist, once, travelling all over to give concerts. She was extremely talented, and she’d passed some of it on to her son, clearly. She’d seen it, and wanted him to follow in her footsteps. Kanza had thought he would, too. Until the day Kanza discovered amateur demon-hunting, and his love of music simply could not compete with his love for the power demon-hunting gave him. It was a special kind of power, that; like having the world at his fingertips. Not a very good idea, all things considered, since Kanza was the sort of person who thrived on power. Thrived not necessarily in a good way, though certainly in a powerful one.

Of course, he’d still loved the piano, still played it regularly. But it wasn’t the same. And shortly after, Corazon’s health had begun to decline. And then Kanza had been forced to keep up the demon hunting, because now it paid the bills, kept them both off the street when Corazon could no longer work.

Kanza had been fourteen. He hadn’t known what to do very well. He’d just done what he thought was reasonable. He’d been scared, still young. He was afraid for his mom, afraid they would take her away. Whoever they were. The monsters from the bedtime stories; the nightmares that plagued his dreams. Now, of course, they had a different name. Government. Social security workers. State care. The horrifying word hovering on the edge of consciousness: Insane asylum.

The demons chased Kanza in his dreams, and they had different forms. They were twisted shadows that haunted the edges of his mind, looking on with terrible stares and sharp eyes, waiting for the chance to pounce. He’d changed, hunting demons. He’d become someone just a little different. The Lullaby used to be his favourite; it was his mom’s favourite, and she’d played it for him every night before bed. He’d never had a father. His mom was everything.

Kanza let the last notes fade into the air, resting his hands on the silent keys. His head was bowed, eyes closed. He cut a dramatic and sorrowful figure for a sixteen year old boy. It was not all unearned.

His head snapped up abruptly (the sorrowful figure part was done), eyes alert as he turned to his mother. Corazon was sleeping, her head resting gently on the sofa’s arm, dark hair hiding most of her face. Kanza got up silently, flicking off the lamp as he went and plunging the room into darkness.

He paused for a moment at the sofa, staring down at the sleeping form of his mom. He could make out only her outline in the darkness, lit here and there by pinpricks of luminescence from the city lights outside the window.

After a second or two, he turned and strode out of the room, into the empty and silent hall. His footsteps were loud as he traversed the minuscule apartment entryway, scooping his trenchcoat up off the floor where he’d dumped it earlier on his way to get dressed.

The night was empty and dark, cold with the stars and the rushing wind as Kanza flung open the door. It looked like one of those nights in dark movies where the hero is about to be faced with impending doom. Kanza didn’t consider himself at risk; he wasn’t exactly a hero, after all.

He closed and locked the apartment door behind him, and then set off down the outside hall at a brisk pace, trenchcoat flapping behind him. He looked like some kind of odd vengeful angel. Well, he would’ve without the trenchcoat, at any rate. With it, he looked more like an evil criminal mastermind. They’re both nice.

The notes from Brahms’ Lullaby were still trickling through Kanza’s head as he walked. They were a faint and infinitely sad counterpart to his cheerful mood. He was a naturally cheerful person, and the two weren’t meshing well. The problem may have been that actually, he wasn’t a naturally cheerful person. He only pretended to be. But perhaps he was, now. They say if you pretend enough, eventually that’s who you’ll become.

The streets were dark. Everything was dark; dark is a very descriptive word. Kanza used it because he could. And because it sounded nice. ‘Dark’.

The streetlamps were on, but they made little headway into the darkness of Midward at night.

Shadows were beginning to detach themselves from the corners of buildings. Winged shapes fluttered down from the tops of window ledges. Cloaked figures slunk out of shops, hastily concealing extra horns and tails.

Kanza walked with a bounce in his step, eyes alert, head up. He was watchful. The night was alive.

He turned onto Harcourt Street. It was a nice, quiet little place, full of elderly gentlemen and ancient, wrinkled ladies. No grimy apartment buildings to be found here.

The street was empty and silent. A breeze lifted the hair at the nape of Kanza’s neck; it felt pleasantly cool as he strode along the sidewalk, boots tapping on the pavement. The low rows of houses were dark, their inhabitants having retired for the night. It was not safe to stay up late in Midward. One never knew what might happen. Battered fish coming from the sky? Yep. Acid rain? Of course.

A tiny trickle of light caught Kanza’s eye. It was just a flash, a spark, jumping in the bushes. Kanza froze. One hand slid stealthily inside his pockets, searching.

“Oi!” the dark shape detached itself from the bushes and tackled Kanza headlong, throwing him backward. He tripped on the curb and ended up flat on his back in the street. His reflexes screamed danger, and he rolled, kicking out with his feet. It was a fairly pathetic manoeuvre, and had he been able to see it, he might have dropped dead right there of shame. He was an awfully proud sort of person.

“Ow, you idiot!” His attacker, who had a remarkably high-pitched and feminine voice, slammed a fist into the side of his face. Stars. They were shiny…

Kanza lunged out, still seeing bright light, and felt his boot connect with something solid. Bone snapped.

“Who’s…there…” he panted, somewhat unnecessarily, lurching backward. He was a trifle unsteady on his feet; his head was ringing, his vision returning slightly blurred. He paused, one hand now firmly wrapped around the handle of his knife.

A small figure was crouched in the middle of the road a few feet away, cradling its arm against its chest.

“You know, you are seriously going to pay for that,” it announced raggedly.

“You attacked me,” Kanza answered warily, straightening. The figure raised its head, and Kanza was a little taken aback. A girl’s face, her features oddly pointed, stared back at him. The long, dark hair straggling around her shoulders was striped with electric blue. She was glaring at him. Kanza felt his throat tighten.

“Werewolf.”

“Demon-hunter.”

They exchanged looks of mutual hatred, each one trying to outdo the other.

“Filthy shapeshifter,” Kanza spat, looking away in disgust.

“Traitorous murderer,” the girl returned. She was still hunched over in the road, her arm pressed tightly against her chest, but her look was pure venom. Kanza hoped he’d broken her arm.

“What are you doing here?”

“I could ask the same of you, demon boy.” A smirk.

“I’m doing my job,” Kanza retorted scornfully. He sheathed his knife. The girl caught the movement.

“Oh, putting away your weapon, now, are you? What, am I no longer a threat?”

“You attacked me.” He spoke through gritted teeth. “And besides, you’re not worth the effort, miss.” The last word was added with obvious effort as he maintained his usual charm with difficulty. She might be a werewolf—a darned creature—but he wasn’t going to sacrifice his civility.

“Oi, peahead, don’t you have any honour?” the girl panted in reply. She snarled, a feral sound that momentarily took Kanza aback. He covered his surprise with an arrogant look that probably couldn’t even have been made out in the virtual no-light. Then again, werewolves have pretty good night vision.

“You’re just going to leave me here? I think you broke my wrist.”

Only her wrist? darn. He was highly tempted to finish the job.

“Fine.” Instead, he stalked forward, thrust out his hand without looking down, and stood stonily while she pulled herself up. She was pretty strong; her grip was crushing. Kanza pretended not to notice until she was standing erect, panting a little and shoving her hair out of her eyes with her good hand. She was small; she looked about fourteen or fifteen. Rather young to be out on her own. But werewolves couldn’t be fathomed; they were savages, anyway. He wouldn’t’ve put it past her to be gnawing on a hunk of raw meat. She had a slim sort of build, graceful. Almost pretty, in a wild, wolfish sort of way. Her eyes were silver-green in the moonlight.

“Did you pick those up at the dollar store?” Kanza jerked his head toward the silvery bracelets that jangled along her arm. “I suppose werewolves can’t afford much, not being able to get jobs around here. The Act was for your own good, of course. But you’re probably too stupid to know that.” He smirked. “Be glad we’re looking out for you.”

“They’re real silver,” the girl hissed in reply, shoving her hand at his face. He took a step back.

“Silver, on a werewolf?”

“Demon boy thinks he’s so clever,” the werewolf girl announced sarcastically. “Wouldn’t you know it; an idiot like the lot of them. That’s a stupid myth, pretty boy.”

Kanza had no answer to that; it was the first time he’d ever been called something to the likes of ‘pretty boy’ before, and he was thinking this one over. Demon boy, now that was okay. That had character. Style.

“Name’s Irony, by the way,” the girl added after a moment. “Not that I’d expect you to remember it; you probably can’t remember your own name.” She grinned gleefully, obviously under the opinion she’d won. “And don’t even think of saying it,” she added warningly.

“Kanza,” Kanza said stiffly, not looking at her.

“Mmm. Fancy a drink, demon boy?” Irony looked at him calculatingly. It was only Kanza’s inbred good manners that prevented him from slapping her. That and the fact that he was sore all over from being tossed in the road. The werewolf girl was strong.

“That would be lovely,” he answered stiffly, raising and lowering one shoulder. It felt dislocated. It also felt a little strange: he, Kanza, was standing in the middle of the road agreeing to a drink with a werewolf who had just attacked him.

Irony snorted, tossing her hair back. She had her wrist tightly pressed to herself, but it didn’t stop her from looking as scornful as if he’d just announced his habit of playing with Barbie dolls.

“Yes: lovely. I bet you’ve never been inside a bar in your life. Let me show you the real Midward at night. It’s not all demon-hunting and heroics, pretty boy.”

[Kathleen]

SPOILER: Click to show

It was stuffy and quite warm inside the dimly-lit bar. Well, technically, according to the sign outside, it was the ‘Underward Café’. What kind of café it could possibly be that only served watery coffee and something that may have passed as beer (a very, very long time ago), Kanza wasn’t quite sure. But if the sign said it was a café, then he was sure it was at least a café. The name was a play on words; a poor one, in Kanza’s opinion. He wasn’t too fond of it.

He sat at the table stiffly, drumming his fingers on the top and trying not to stare too much. The assortment in this place was almost as bad as the furniture, which was saying something, considering that most of the tables and chairs looked like they’d been rescued from a dump, and the Formica-topped counter that the barman stood behind looked badly in need of hosing down.

Irony was cradling her wrist and nursing a tall paper cup of something that was probably coffee. She kept glancing sideways at Kanza, and looking triumphant, in a sullen, blue-haired sort of way.

Behind their table, a man in a shabby greatcoat sat hunched over, scribbling madly away on a notepad. There was a plate of something that might once have been called pie but was probably no longer edible sitting in front of him, untouched. Not really surprising, considering it’s general aura of mouldiness.

An ordinary-looking couple in casual clothes sat at a romantic table for two next to the dingy window, so thickly coated with grime you hadn’t a hope of seeing through it. They were leaning forward across a lit candle. Very far forward. So far forward that the woman’s chin was actually in the candle flame. She was staring dreamily into the man’s eyes. Which were a very peculiar shade of red. And had no pupils. Kanza’s hands twitched automatically, and Irony frowned at him.

“At least have the decency to pretend you don’t want to kill everyone in here,” she snapped, loud enough so that several heads turned, including one with a nice set of horns. A tall, thin blonde man in the very back smiled at Kanza, revealing a set of very sharp teeth. Kanza snatched his hand off the table, repressing a shudder. How he’d let this werewolf drag him into this, he really wasn’t sure. He supposed he was being honourable—he had hurt her, after all. Though werewolves—half beast creatures—were darned by God anyway. That was what Kanza was thinking, extremely self-righteously in a pigheaded sort of way, anyway.

“You know, I really think you should make more of an effort,” Irony continued, staring down into her coffee cup. “You humans are so racist.” In the brighter light—though, admittedly, not much brighter—of the café, she was a striking picture. Her very thin, sharp features were hollowed; there were dark smudges under her silver-blue eyes, ringed with a thick layer of black eyeliner. She was wearing black lipstick, and the nails that tapped the side of her coffee cup were decorated with chipped black polish.

Her clothes, however, definitely took centre stage. She wore a very short black skirt layered on top of bright, St. Patrick’s Day Green leggings, and a pair of candy cane-striped leg warmers. She had on a black shirt with Jonathan Coulton emblazoned across the front in dripping red letters. Her black coat, hanging with numerous silver chains, was draped over the back of her chair. She looked like some kind of horrible Goth-meets-Pop-and-goes-mad combination.

“That’s rich, coming from a werewolf,” Kanza retorted. He was trying to figure out what or who Jonathan Coulton was. He wasn’t getting very far, namely because Kanza had never picked up a CD that wasn’t classical music in his life. Lives, plural, if you believe in reincarnation. “Or don’t you hate vampires? Is that another myth?” He raised one eyebrow sardonically, an expression perfected by long hours spent in the mirror. He had to do something in his spare time.

Irony rolled her very blue eyes skyward. They really were striking, especially surrounded by all that pale, shadowy face. Not to mention the dark makeup they were ringed with.

“Where on earth do you get your information, demon boy? We’ve moved past all that ages ago. This is the twenty-first century, in case you’ve forgotten.”

Her sarcastic, condescending tone was really starting to get to Kanza’s inner self. The one that was extremely arrogant and highly sensitive. The one that was generally always expressed. He wasn’t much of a subtle person.

“I know perfectly a well what century it is, thanks very much.” He glared at her. “What I don’t know is why the hell I’m here when I should be out hunting! I get paid for it, you know. It’s my job.”

Irony rolled her eyes. “Your job, eh?”

“You’re not Canadian, either,” Kanza added waspishly. He picked up his drink and took a long gulp. He choked and put it down again, coughing violently into his napkin. Irony looked faintly amused.

“Not used to coffee, eh?”

“What…is this stuff?!” Kanza gasped, ignoring the jab. He looked up and met the stare of a silver-haired faun, who was laughing silently. Kanza gave him a freezing glare. He subsided, looking slightly abashed. He had a nice trenchcoat.

“Coffee,” Irony responded emphatically, dipping a finger into her own and using it as a stirrer. She looked a little absentminded, chewing on a piece of electric-blue hair. “Real coffee. The only kind.”

“Why are you so opposed to demon hunters, anyway? Demons are evil. They need killing.”

“And you’re one to judge, I’m sure, Prince Charming.” Irony rolled her eyes. “But anyway, opposed to what you do, really: sure, I agree, demons don’t belong here. But you guys are after everyone, not just the ‘evil demons’. I mean, look at all the nonhuman laws; it doesn’t take a genius to see that they were all pushed by demon-hunters. Corrupt government.” She narrowed her eyes sourly.

“Nonhumans need to be controlled,” Kanza said importantly, but not too loudly, because he was, after all, rather more clever than he at times seemed, and even his pride wouldn’t permit him to utter such a sentence in one of the only places in Midward frequented almost exclusively by nonhumans. And that was saying something, considering Midward was the nonhuman capital of the world. They were far more tolerated there than most other places.

“Oh, please. If you actually believe that, you’re stupider than I thought,” Irony said with a snort of disgust.

“I don’t believe anything.” Kanza shrugged. “I hunt demons, princess.” He paused to check the effect of his address—it seemed to have none, perhaps because it was delivered in the completely irrelevant tone of people who really have no clue how to assign condescending nicknames—and then continued, a little disappointed, “I protect the people of my city. I am a protector, a watcher. I will hunt to the ends of the earth and through the night for my mother, and for the memory of my father.” It was a very eloquent speech, ruined only slightly by the fact that at the very moment he’d finished, solemn and pompous, eyes very wide, leaning forward, hands crossed on the table, there was a yell of “Fire!”

And a considerable amount of panicking on the account of many guests. Kanza leaped up from his seat, completely forgetting his point.

“Fire, fire!” more screams added to the first, and suddenly the café was a mass of shoving bodies that stirred the dust in the room. It was a virtual stampede to the door. There was the definite tang of smoke in the air, too, and pretty orange flames were licking the side of a window.

“Ugh.” Irony appeared by Kanza’s side as he fought his way past a young and incredibly handsome blonde vampire to one of the windows. The barkeeper—or café manager, call him what you will—was surprisingly calm, shouldering his way through the crowd toward the door. He was suddenly very, very tall. He towered over everyone.

“Relax.” Irony flashed a very white grin in Kanza’s direction. “Happens all the time. Silly Romeo; how many times Gar’s told him to stop trying it here. But he can’t really help himself; reflexes, you know.”

As she talked, she was shouldering open the window that Kanza was staring at a little bewilderedly, trying to think. The smoke was awfully thick by now, and it was making his head spin and his eyes swim. He tried to hold his breath. It was suddenly uncomfortably hot in here.

“He’s really sorry, of course, but it costs an awful lot to rebuild if they don’t get it put out in time,” Irony continued blandly, completely oblivious to the situation. “I hate this darn window; it never opens right. Oh, well, I don’t suppose a window will be much, compared to what he’s going to have to replace…hmmm.”

She drew back her arm, and smashed a fist into the window. It spiderwebbed, shattering most pleasingly. Kanza gaped. His ability to do anything useful seemed to have deserted him. This was a new and completely unheard of situation. Raving mad demons, he could deal with. People trying to kill him, ditto. Tiny dingy nonhuman cafes that were not really cafes being burnt down by a pyromancer…that was a different story.

“Idiot, what are you doing?” Irony grabbed Kanza’s arm in a surprisingly strong grip, thrusting him forward at the jagged opening in the window. “Out, and hurry.”

With a lot of prompting from Irony, Kanza managed to scramble through the window, moving numbly. He was trying to make sense of everything that had just happened. All he could think of was that werewolves were supposed to be evil. They weren’t really supposed to help humans they’d just met escape from buildings on fire.

A moment later, they were standing out on the dark street, the wind ruffling Kanza’s hair. It was pleasantly cool after the hot interior. The café blazed cheerfully away behind them, crackling sparks. Irony had dragged them both several feet away, and was now combing cinders out of her long hair.

“Oh, dang it, I forgot my jacket. I really liked that one, you know.” Irony groaned, wrinkling her nose. She seemed to be amazingly calm for someone who had just smashed their way out of a burning building.

Kanza stared at her dumbly. He took a tentative breath of the chilly air, and started coughing violently. A second later he was doubled over in the street.

“Oh.” Irony’s eyebrows went up in an expression of such surprise it was almost comical. She stared down at Kanza for a minute. “Oh, crap, humans get smoke-poisoning or something, right?” No one answered her; a crowd had begun to gather of babbling nonhumans a few feet away, and Kanza was curled up on the ground, looking remarkably like he might be dead, suspiciously unmoving. He opened one eye when he heard her, but couldn’t find the breathe or the motivation to answer. He was really, really sick of this werewolf girl.

“Irony! Irony, dearest, are you all right?!”

The arrival of a new voice and a pair of very large and heavy feet on the pavement made Kanza close his eyes again, concentrating on just lying there. He would deal with his ruined pride and shattered reputation later.

“What happened, sweet one?” The new voice belonged to a man who was very thin and lanky, in an emaciated I-haven’t-eaten-in-about-six-weeks kind of way. He had a scraggly beard and singed-off eyebrows that made him look perpetually surprised.

“I’m not sure what’s wrong with him, and call me ‘sweet one’ one more time, and you’re going to be in a worse situation” Kanza heard Irony answer. He closed his eyes as tightly as he possibly could.

“He’s a human?” Like, he’s an ant?

“So are you, pal,” Irony reminded him, sounding disapproving.

“A very special one.” Romeo the pyromancer winked. “He’ll be fine in a minute or two, though: inhaled some smoke no doubt. I should know.”

“I suppose I’d better stay with him until he gets up, then,” Irony said doubtfully. “I did make him come here. But don’t you dare tell anyone that! If you do I will definitely find a way to kill you. Painfully.” Her tone suggested anyone who thought she was joking would receive the same kind of punishment.

Kanza risked opening his eyes and sitting up a little. Irony was standing over him, across from the tall man, arms folded across her chest.

“Hey, I’m not going to tell anyone anything.” Romeo backed away, hands raised slightly. He let them drop after a second, a curious expression manifesting itself on his face.

“Who started that, anyway?”

“What? I thought you did that.” Irony frowned, uncrossing her arms.

“No, no, darling, I certainly didn’t do that. I can control myself better than that.” Romeo laughed heartily. He was one of those incredibly mystifying and annoying people who are perpetually cheery and even-tempered. The type where when you say, “The universe has imploded”, they respond with, “Oh, awesome! I bet the environmentalists are having a picnic; no more earth for us to destroy!” he was also perpetually flirty. He was eyeing Kanza in a very speculative way.

“Who, then?” Irony glanced down, seemed to notice Kanza for the first time, and an annoyed expression fixed itself on her face once more. She dropped down on the ground abruptly, her collection of silver jewellery clinking. Kanza hurriedly moved over, brushing off his completely ruined shirt. Two in as many days. He might keep this one as a souvenir, though: The One and Only Time I Let a Werewolf Talk Me into Something. It would look nice on a gold plaque.

“I don’t suppose you know, do you, pretty boy?” she grunted.

Romeo’s lack of eyebrows went up slightly, and he lowered his lanky form to the pavement. It might have looked just a little odd—three individuals of varying sizes and species sitting in the middle of a little side-street in the dead of night. Then again, it may not have. This was Midward, after all. The dark side of Midward.

“Pretty boy? Is that what she calls you?” Romeo chortled slightly, leaning forward to inspect Kanza, who leaned back a ways. “Don’t be offended, she’s got a long list of nicknames for everyone. And you are lovely,” the pyromancer added, winking a little. Kanza leaned back further, trying to disguise his horror.

“Do not.” Irony looked slightly affronted.

“I suspect it’s because her own isn’t exactly ideal,” Romeo continued, smirking. Irony swiped at his head, missed, and swore. Kanza blinked, noticing something for the first time. Some people are rather unobservant.

“Hey, your wrist...”

“Werewolves heal fast.” Irony sat back on her heels. She looked thoughtful. “Hmm. A mysterious fire.” She glanced back toward the café, which steamed slightly as water poured off its dingy grey bricks. The sign had been partially devoured by the fire; it looked lost hanging there, lopsided.

A cluster of people surrounded the front of the café, headed by the café-owner (barkeeper), who was back to normal size once again. They were talking agitatedly. The voice of the café-owner-barkeeper boomed out above the murmurs,

“It’s all right, folks! Just a little accident, we had. Fire’s out, no harm done. Well, nothing I can’t fix up in a jiffy. You know me; I’ve had plenty of practice. Comes from running this kind of place.”

There were laughs. Kanza raised his hand and inspected his nails. One of them had a slight chip in it. He’d have to sand that smooth before playing the piano again.

It seemed not such a bad thing, now; just a little fire, an accident. A tipped candle, perhaps: there had been plenty of them. Or an accident with the stove. Easy. Things like that happen all the time. Really. People believe anything.

“You know, I really don’t believe this. I really don’t,” Irony announced to no one in particular and the world in general. Well, most people, anyway.

Romeo frowned. “Why not?” he asked reasonably. “Things like this happen all the time; Midward’s the swamp of the West so to speak. Murder, mystery…” he trailed off, failing to find another word that started with m. “Um, intrigue,” he finished lamely, shrugging a little. Kanza was looking at him, fighting an internal struggle. Finally, he asked,

“So, you’re a pyromancer?” He endeavoured to keep his tone casual, but it came out sounding slightly too eager and curious. Romeo turned to him.

“Yeah. That’s me, pyromancer.” Wink. “What’re you, my lovely boy?” A cursory glance. “Ah. Demon hunter, right?”

Kanza frowned. “How’d you guess?” he asked, though secretly he was gratified. It made him sit up straighter, adopting a martyred look.

Romeo shrugged, then grinned wickedly. “The clothes. Typical demon hunter style.”

Kanza frowned slightly, but he was prevented from saying anything by Irony interrupting.

“All right, shut it you two. You’re distracting me.” She had her chin in her hands, and was looking pensive and thoughtful. Kanza wisely fell silent. He was starting to become aware of the fact that he was sitting in the middle of a dark street in the dead of night, next to two nonhumans. It was something he had certainly never thought would be possible. He wasn’t very stretched in the thinking department.

He thought for a moment about what might happen if a car suddenly decided it wanted to take a detour through Elm Street. The driver might be a little surprised to find three kids sitting in the middle of the road. Not that it was very likely; this street was hardly ever used. Still, it merited thinking about. Really, it did. It was the same type of thing as wondering whether when you’re at the very top of a building a hurricane might suddenly spin up out of nowhere.

He really ought to get back to what he’d been planning. This night certainly had taken some interesting turns. But he wasn’t going to get paid for hanging out with a sarcastic teenage werewolf and a pyromancer with no eyebrows. He needed to catch some demons.

This made him start to shift restlessly, until Romeo turned his head, fixing Kanza with an eyebrow-less stare. It was quite intimidating, despite the fact that Romeo wasn’t that much older and certainly no larger (though he was probably taller—he looked like a strand of spaghetti). Perhaps it was something about the way his smudge of a beard was smoking slightly. Survival instincts said this was Not a Man to Mess With.

Something came back to Kanza suddenly, in the way things do when you’re sitting on your backside in the dirt. Or pavement. Same difference.

The man at the apartment. He frowned, trying to remember. What had it been? There were so many truly weird individuals hanging around these days; he’d passed it off as nothing, just one more nutcase claiming the world was going to end soon. Burning buildings, though…on the same night. What had he said? “It’s a changing world out there, boy…. Just remember: I warned you.”

Kanza sat up straighter abruptly, eyes widening. He was on the verge of making connections. Very important ones. Not ones he’d ever had to make before. But he was being shaken, slowly but surely; the world was coming apart at the seams. Well, it had been for a while. He just hadn’t noticed it, because it hadn’t affected him directly yet. Little things: mysterious fires, disappearances. They looked normal. They were hushed-up right away; written off as regular crime. As if crime was normal.

“Demons,” said Irony, at the same time as Kanza said,

“Demons.”

It may have been the first and only time they would ever agree on anything, and it should perhaps have been marked quite historically. With balloons and streamers. Perhaps cake. Though the cake is always a lie.

At the very least, it should have been made note of in someone’s diary, written down so that it could not be forgotten. Sadly, the only thing to note was that Romeo blinked, looking bemused, and Irony shot Kanza a glare that would probably have killed anyone else. As it was, he returned it stonily.

“As I was going to say, before Prince Charming over there interrupted me,” Irony began icily after a moment, “is that it could possibly be demons. We’ve had some outbreaks before. They get too restless; we nonhumans aren’t exactly cozy with them, either.”

“Oh, now you’re not ‘cozy’ with them?” Kanza purposefully made his tone baiting. “I thought you guys were best chums. Whatever happened to ‘murderer’?”

Irony shot him an icy glare. “I liked pretty boy better,” she said loftily.

Romeo snorted quietly.

“I’m going home,” Kanza sighed. He was going to have to look more closely at this nickname thing. One doesn’t want to go down in history as Pretty Boy; it isn’t dignified. Demon Thrasher, Demon Scourge, something like that would be amendable. Pretty boy didn’t really cut it.

Irony waved a hand vaguely. “Go on home. You don’t belong here, anyway.”

The last comment cut deep, but Kanza didn’t realize it. Or even think about it much on his way home, not one single dead demon to say for it.

Once he was lying in bed, however, his eyes closing very much against his will, he had a few spare minutes to think about things. He used them quite productively, stacking up a list of pros and cons for…things.

By the time he lost consciousness, he’d decided demon boy was definitely far more in his favour. Pretty boy had a list of cons too long to count, and he wasn’t good at math.

***


The next morning it was quite cheerful and sunny. The birds were out and everything, chirping away merrily and ridiculously. Kanza had a pounding headache that led him to believe there had been little actual beans in his ‘coffee’ the night before, and a considerable lot of something quite a bit stronger. It made it extremely difficult getting dressed. Thursdays are always a pain, anyway, and this one had a bad start. Sunny days just didn’t work out for Kanza usually. Grey and gloomy were a lot better, in his opinion. They had cool synonyms. And they were great for slinking around and looking mysterious and heroic. He liked to think of himself as a vengeful, protecting spectre. A figment of Midward’s imagination.

Now that would make a good title: Midward’s Imagination. Wonderful.

The walk to school was dreadfully annoying. Corazon was still asleep when Kanza left, something that made him vaguely suspicious, though he hid it. He wasn’t going to worry. The day was bad enough, what with it being sunny and all, without him deciding to start worrying.

The sun glinted off car windows and spiralled in beautiful patterns on the sidewalk. The whole world seemed cheerier today. There were no puddles; the sidewalks were warm and dry and brown leaves scuttled along them, urged by a pleasant wind. They crunched under Kanza’s vengeful shoes. They looked a little put-out afterwards, drifting off in a million tiny bits. You could hear them whispering to their other leaf-friends, “Well, he’s in a bad mood today.”

Kanza strode along looking for all the world like an angry hornet. He was even wearing yellow and black: yellow shirt with a lot of frothy lace at the collar and gold buttons, pressed black pants and boots shined to a polish. Why he was wearing boots was beyond anyone’s guess; it was Kanza. He liked to stand out. Tennis shoes didn’t make as big of a bang as real honest-to-goodness leather boots. Even if they were a dreadfully dull shade. You couldn’t get hot pink boots without being laughed at. And even if no one dared laugh at Kanza (admiring looks were more like it when it came to him), it would have ruined his reputation. You just didn’t do it.

There was a lady at the corner in high heels and a silk suit. She was hailing a taxi from the mass congregating in front of the shiny business offices. Kanza waved politely to her in a slightly distracted manner, failing to notice the woman’s hat, which was pink. With feathers. It was an interesting accessory, though, sadly, not plot relevant.

Kanza stepped up beside her, causing the woman to turn around, the feathers on her pink hat ruffling, frown a little, then ignore him as a taxi pulled up just then. Kanza hit the walk button, and sat back on his heels to await the long line of cars that streamed past.

His phone rang at exactly the same time as someone behind him said,

“You know, it’s much more fun to just run across. All those tyres squealing.” Kanza jumped and dropped the cell phone he’d fished out of his pocket. It was an undignified move, again. He seemed to be making them more and more often these days. Occupational hazard.

“Gah,” he spluttered, staring at Irony and scrambling to pick up his phone. The werewolf girl was resplendent in pink jeans, a plaid kilt with an ornate belt that looked to be made out of copper, and a green t-shirt. It said, Jonathan Coulton Pwns You! across it in brilliant yellow letters.

“Like it?” Irony asked, noticing his stare. She twirled round on the sidewalk for him, and Kanza was vaguely surprised to hear an absence of shrieking horns and crashing noises. He’d expected several car accidents by now. Indeed, there was one man who dropped his coffee on his lap, and one young-ish girl driving herself to university who happened to look up and keep looking up and accidentally drove into the curb. He didn’t see either. But all in all, most things were fine. Except for one bird that dropped dead from sheer sensory-overload.

“This is who we’re walking with?” someone interrupted, and Kanza tore his gaze away from the kilt, which he now noticed had red poodles sewn all over it, and looked up. And up. And up a little more. Brian Phillips was very tall. He was also skinny as a rail and twice as fragile-looking as glass. He looked like he might blow over if you breathed too hard. He had very pale skin to match Irony’s, and dark, dark eyes.

“Nice to meet you, I’m Brain,” continued Brian cheerfully. Irony stopped spinning and shoved her hair out of her eyes in one quick movement.

“Oh, yeah, this is my brother, Brian,” she said cheerfully. “He’s weird. Brian, meet…er…”

“Brain,” Brian corrected carefully, at the same time as Kanza supplied bitterly,

“Kanza.”

“I know your name, Prince Charming,” Irony snapped, shooting Kanza a freezing look. “And your name is not Brain, for the last time, Brian!”

Brian looked hurt. “There’re three other Brians in my class already,” he explained morosely to Kanza. “I just switched a couple letters around. They call me a geek, but it’s worth it.”

Kanza was floored. Literally. He was considering sitting down right there on the pavement and putting his head in his hands. Either that, or turn around and march straight home. This day was turning out to be worse than he’d thought. Just to prove that things can always get worse, though, it was exactly then that the crosswalk turned green and cheerfully mimed a stick-figure striding across the street. Kanza gave Irony and Brian—Brain—a weary look, shouldered his backpack firmly, and marched in all his boots and lacy yellow shirt finery across the street. Irony followed closely behind, humming a tune under her breath and swinging a lime-green messenger bag. Brain raced after the lot of them, long limbs flying out in all directions. He looked like a small hurricane. Brain running was a sight indeed to behold. It was astonishing how he managed to run at all; by the look of things, he should have tripped and fallen in several different directions long ago. As it was, he only just seemed to be holding it together.

The passengers of the cars waiting at the stoplight gaped. A very prissy man had his mouth open, his jaw lightly grazing the steering wheel. An elderly lady was muttering under her breath, “Kids these days.”

“Mind telling me just exactly what you’re doing here?” Kanza snapped, gaining the other sidewalk and continuing to stride along just as fast as his boots would allow. Heads in cars all along the street turned in his direction. He ignored them. He was in a nice Kanza-mood; one of those ones even the gods tend to flee from.

“We just moved here,” Irony said cheerfully, keeping pace easily. Her legs seemed to be extendable; they just kept on coming, longer, longer, longer…hit the sidewalk and pull the rest of her along. She was sporting an excessive collection of silver earrings and a sort of bangle tied into her very long hair, which was loose and in serious danger of tripping her. The electric blue stripes stood out prominently.

“Dad said it was so much better here,” she continued in that blithely friendly tone that completely clashed with how she had addressed Kanza earlier. She seemed to alternate between being bitingly sarcastic and insanely cheerful.

“Came…from…Albany,” Brain panted, catching up to them. His right arm flailed backwards, and his left foot was pointed sideways. He hop-skip-tangle-jogged until he was level with Irony, who had dropped a few feet behind Kanza. They both seemed to be extraordinarily fast runners. Of course, they were werewolves, which could have been a large part of it.

“I hope there aren’t so many Brians here,” Brain added. “Though I am Brain now, so I suppose it shouldn’t matter.” He looked vaguely thoughtful. Kanza ground his teeth together, marching on, gaze fixed firmly ahead. He was determined he wasn’t going to look anywhere else at all for the next ten minutes until he either dropped dead of the pace he had set or reached the school. The dropping dead thing seemed likelier by the minute. He was looking a little winded.

“First day of school. Woohoo!” Irony seemed to be enjoying herself far too much for where she was headed.

“Don’t you nonhumans have your own school?” Kanza growled, breaking his promise to himself not to say anything. He simply couldn’t help it. He was an extremely talkative person. He had to saying something.

“Oh, yeah, but that’s over in Eastside. Bit of a pain when you live a half-hour away.” Irony laughed, and Brain looked a little confused.

“We…tried…going,” he panted (he seemed to be having extreme difficulty getting enough air to speak—he looked like he was using it all up preventing his limbs from flying off). “Too…far…away.”

“We got some written thing from the mayor, or someone important.” Irony waved one hand carelessly, something that is very hard to do when striding along very fast. She managed to make it look cool.

“Excellent. Just excellent. I’m walking to school with two werewolves.” Kanza made his tone as sarcastic as he could possibly manage while gasping for breath. “I’m a demon hunter. A human demon hunter.”

“Sorry.” Irony didn’t look sorry. “I know it ruins your reputation, pretty boy. Don’t think I haven’t thought of that. I’m extremely considerate, you know,” she added thoughtfully. Considerate was not a word most people would use in conjunction with Irony Phillips, but then again, they probably didn’t know her. Not a lot of people did, though a lot certainly thought they knew her.

The large, foreboding building of the high school came into sight just then, crowded out front with milling teenagers clutching backpacks. Unfortunately, Kanza had not yet passed out. It may have been for the best. Or not.

He paused at the towering arches, closely shadowed by Irony and Brain, the latter panting and looking a little stooped. His left foot was still pointing backwards. It looked a little lost, especially since it was wearing a very red and very, very large shoe. At least size fourteen.

“I’ve already met most people in the Under, though,” Irony remarked to no one in particular. A very short, pimply boy with hunched shoulders gave her an odd look as he passed, then sped up to almost a run to get to the doors. Kanza gave Irony a Look. A Kanza Look. Supreme style.

“You aren’t going to follow me around, are you?” Every word was chewed up and spat out. By a gravel crusher. Kanza’s charming and suave attitude was being severely tested. It was failing quite sadly.

Irony cocked her head to one side, seeming to consider. She had on a lot of black makeup again. “We’ve only just met, demon boy.” She sounded vaguely disgusted. “How can you expect me not to follow you around? You’re quite amusing.” She flashed him a very white smile. It was also quite a sharp smile. There were a lot of teeth in it. Menacing teeth. Wolfish teeth.

Kanza was not impressed. He was a demon hunter, after all. Needless to say, however, he kept to the safe side, and just assumed a long-suffering expression and gritted his teeth.

“Welcome to Midward High,” he chirped. Well, actually, ‘growled’ more accurately described his vocal tones. But it’s the effort that counts, and you could tell he was trying. Trying for something, at any rate.

“I love it already.” Irony beamed. Brain blinked a little bemusedly.

“I wonder how many Brians there are.”



School was a drag. With iron spikes. Or a mace, being hauled backwards through the dirt. Possibly by a very hairy warrior in a kilt with a broadsword.

It caught every step of the way. If high school hadn’t been mandatory, it would have been purgatory. No joke.

High school with Irony and Brain, however, was torture. Pure torture. Kanza liked to go through life with style. With flair and elegance, trailing a nine-foot reputation behind him. Irony came after, calmly treading it into the dirt. In one day, she was the focal point of the whole school. Besides the fact that she was a werewolf (which was epic in itself), no-one had ever met anyone stranger. Irony topped even the weirdest worst of the school. She was a step above and below everyone. She didn’t fit into a class; no, she was far too unique for that. She was just Irony. And there was plenty of irony about it, though if you’d ever said that to her face, you might want to seriously consider moving to Under Midward a few days later. Not that she went around sporting her wolfishness, or really biting people, either. She just had a habit of smiling at you, with those very dangerous looking teeth.

She followed Kanza around everywhere, like some kind of annoying fly. Buzz, buzz, buzz…he smiled at everyone and introduced her, and stood by with a tight little grin and a very blank expression while she completely shredded his reputation.

There was a lot of Jonathan Coulton going around that morning, as well. In math class, there was a resounding chorus of, “Ikea! Just some oak and some pine and a handful of Norsemen...”

By ten o’clock, Kanza found himself humming very quietly, “And there’s a creepy doll, it’s got a ruined eye….” He was ever so slightly horrified.

Brain was perhaps worse, in his own odd way. He was not just a geek, he was a Geek, with a capital g. And he explained it to everyone he met, very earnestly. He also made very weird jokes that couldn’t be explained except perhaps by a rocket scientist. And there didn’t seem to be many at hand, only clusters of completely bewildered students blinking and nodding in a kind of odd acceptance, then staring after Brain as he walked off along the hallways, humming to himself, completely agape with awe.

The day seemed to go on forever, and ever, and by the time lunch rolled around, Kanza was almost glad, for once. Usually lunch was the opportunity to be gazed at by a mulititude of students, and hear his name whispered over and over in conversations usually containing the words “Amazing” and “Demon”. It was quite gratifying, but also somewhat boring. He tried to avoid it when at all possible, but simply ignoring the fact that it was lunch, and finding something else to do. Such as arranging his clothes in the bathroom mirror, or composing a new piano piece. The former actually required nearly as much work as the latter, his clothes being comparable to a piano piece, in all actuality. There was finesse to them. Only he could truly understand it.

This lunch, however, was a different matter entirely. Kanza stood stolidly in the lunch-line, looking strict and heroic as he moved forward to take a packaged salad and several containers of jell-o. he wasn’t really paying attention, as was fairly obvious by the odd collection amassing itself on his tray. It now included two containers of milk, and coffee creamer.

Irony was right behind him, chattering away. She really was an awfully talkative person. Sarcastic, dark, and completely deranged.

“You know, people here are so friendly. Well, people all over in Midward, actually. I noticed that when we moved in last week. Two weeks, I mean, it’s been really. The apartment’s crap of course, but cool nonetheless. And there’s so many interesting people! You wouldn’t believe how boring Albany is; no even remotely normal sentient beings to speak of. The cheesecakes aren’t half-bad, though, except when they talk. That’s a little weird.”

“Why are you following me around everywhere?” Kanza asked under his breath, inching forward and staring very hard at the bobbing ponytail of the girl in front of him. She had nice hair. But it was nothing compared to Irony’s. Irony had…well, fantastic hair.

“Following you? Don’t kid yourself, pretty boy.” She was scornful again. She switched moods awfully fast. She swung her hair over her shoulder, her bracelets clinking against the metal of the lunch counter. A couple of senior boys gaped openly, and the lady at the checkout register looked as if she was unsure exactly what to make of this anomaly. Irony began to fish around in her wallet. Several things fell out, clattering to the counter. “I’m sticking to you because you know this place, and I’m pretty bad with directions. North, south, west, type ones, I mean. And expect me to know if you walk around saying that.”

A long glare. Kanza revised his idea of the day. It was now officially the worst one he could imagine ever having. He couldn’t think of anything that could possibly make it worse, except perhaps those fashion-magazine-cover girls glancing from him to Irony, and back again, their faces blanker than bacon. Which is pretty blank, as blank things go.

“Ah, money.” Irony triumphantly waved a five-dollar bill at the lunch lady, who took it a little dazedly, her eyes travelling up and down the length of Irony, obviously trying to decide whether or not her vision needed checking. Irony gave her a cheerful smile, and clanked and rattled away. She seemed to have added some sparkly bits to her belt; they clattered, metal-against-metal. Kanza admired them in a sort of bitter, jealous way. She was seriously cramping his style. Actually, stealing would have been a better description. But it didn’t sound as cool.

Kanza was only slightly amazed to find the odd collection of food-related items that seemed to have congregated on his lunch tray. He decided to just the leave the lot, and slunk out of line rather incongruously, much to the lunch lady’s grousing dismay.

“Oi, you,” she called after him, her plump face going into typical lunch-lady type frown. Kanza turned halfway across the vast expanse of tables and gave her a perfectly innocent look, following up by a charming smile.

“So sorry, I just forgot my bag,” he excused himself. The lunch lady’s face melted. She opened her mouth to offer condolences, but was interrupted by the next person in line, who complained morosely, loud enough for everyone to hear,

“Why does he get away with everything?”

It was a rhetorical question, and was answered only by Kanza’s supremely innocent look, and a couple of approving nods from teachers clustered in corners as he passed.

He glanced around. He seemed to have temporarily lost Irony. Seizing his opportunity, he turned sharply for the doors, and darted outside. He paused in the empty corridor, across from the bulletin board to which were tacked notices for the student play, and leaned against the wall for a moment, feeling rather proud of himself. Finally, a moment alone.

“How do you do that?” Irony appeared at his elbow. She was holding a plastic bottle of juice. Kanza stared at her. This girl defied the laws of physics. As well as a few other ones. She looked the breaking-and-entering type. In fact, Irony had a few dirty tricks up her sleeve that she was quite keen to play. But not at the moment. Right now, she was primarily interested, it seemed, in generally astonishing the entire population of Midward. If in less than a day she’d managed to conquer the whole high school, she was well on her way to world domination. All she needed was a couple more victories. It looked like it was going to be pretty easy.

“Hmm. Do you know Mr. Edwards?” Irony was holding up a piece of paper and squinting at it with narrowed violet eyes.

“History teacher,” Kanza sighed, giving up. “He likes me.”

“Everyone does.” Irony looked scornful. “I’ve been noticing; the whole school worships you, demon boy.”

Kanza’s day brightened ever so slightly. Figuratively, anyway. His type of bright day would be nice and chilly with clouds and a light rain.

“I’m likeable,” he agreed. Irony rolled her eyes heavenwards.

“Hopeless,” she muttered. “Absolutely hopeless. You know that, don’t you, pretty boy?” She directed the last at Kanza, along with her trademark glare.

Kanza tried without success to wipe the smug look off his face.

“It’s the demon hunting,” he suggested. “People around here like that. Our government’s doing all it can to eradicate them. It’s getting to be a mess. An epidemic.” He was getting into his stride now, the Demon Hunting Speech he’d rehearsed many times after he’d first heard it, delivered not quite so eloquently by a man Kanza had met the first time he’d ever been out on the streets in search of demons.

The man had been very gruff and matter-of-fact about it; not your typical hero.

“Them’s spreadin’ like the plague; it’s all we can do to keep ’em somewhat under control. It’s not a job of much honour, boy. You want recognition, you go stick your hat on a politician’s seat. It’s them’s that gets all the cheers and clappin’ when the time comes. Us, we’re just stuck out on the street, half of us not even gettin’ paid, doing what we think’s right.”

He’d been wrong in a couple quite important points, Kanza thought (namely the ‘recognition’ one), but overall it was a nice speech, and he’d taken some parts and honed them down, sharpened them up, rounded them out.

“We’re the city’s protectors. It’s us that does all the dirty work; we are the city.” He paused for breath. His arms were slightly lifted. He looked the picture of an angel defending his city. Irony was staring at him, eyebrows raised, looking amused and somewhat startled.

It was at that very remarkable and notable moment that the floor shook with a tremendous force, and the wall behind him split down the centre like a cracked eggshell. It was all very nice and neat. The screams that followed were not.

Kanza turned, very, very slowly. It was quite silent still out in the hallway, though no doubt the lunchroom was a mess of panic and confusion. There were just the two of them out there.

Irony was leaning forward ever so slightly, her mouth hanging slightly open. Her juice bottle slowly slipped out of her hand and fell to the floor, where it rolled a couple feet and then stopped, the liquid sloshing inside.

There was dead silence for a second. Both Kanza and Irony were frozen, staring at the wall. The crack was really very large. Little puffs of concrete floated out of it, dusting Kanza’s boots. There was a sign hanging out of the crack. It was very odd, considering.

“‘Press button, receive bacon?’” Irony asked. She sounded nonplussed.

“I rather think that means ‘dry your hands’,” Kanza observed. Then, “Run?”

Irony blinked.

“Good idea, pretty boy.”

The doors to the cafeteria burst open.

[Kathleen]

SPOILER: Click to show

Chapter Three

Schools being blown apart are an interesting phenomenon. There are just so many people inside them. It was fascinating to Kanza as he tore down the hallway, Irony at his side and a hundred thousand panicking teenagers (plus a couple equally panicking teachers) at least at his back.

It was like one of those cool movies—the ones where everything is slowed down until the people look like they’re in a zero-gravity habitat, just bouncing up and coming down ever so slowly again. Only, this was fast, very, very fast. Kanza was gasping and huffing and puffing and didn’t even notice when a large section of roof crashing down behind him, only to exchange a sort of running-look with Irony, who shrugged amazingly well for someone running at top speed (the werewolf thing again), and mouthed,

“I don’t know.” Actually, she may have said it, but it was rather loud at that point, what with all the rending and tearing sounds of smashing concrete, and the constant screaming of humans being crushed. It was all quite sad. A national disaster, at least.

Kanza was paying very much attention. He was concentrating on not becoming a Kanza-shaped splat against one wall. He really didn’t think his outfit was suitable for burial. Though it seemed at the rate this was going, it would be more like crushial.

He knew to really panic when he started making up words. There was a stitch in his side, and his legs were beginning to feel like jelly. How big was this stupid school, anyway? It didn’t help that there were flying debris everywhere. Concrete dust clouded the air and made it hard to see.

There. Up ahead. Did that sign say ‘Exit’, or ‘Exult’? It was much more statistically probable to say the first one, but Kanza drew up short and dithered for a second, glancing nervously around him. There were distant screams and shouts, bangs, but around him everything seemed mildly calm, except for the fact that it was difficult to make out much through the dust and floating particles in the air.

“What are you waiting for?!” Kanza jumped as Irony roared in his ear. His heart picked up speed a couple notches, a dangerous thing to do, considering it was already pounding in his ears. It sounded like an elephant running a marathon.

Irony looked slightly mad.

“I…” Kanza couldn’t find the breath to say what he wanted. Which was something along the lines of, “I wonder why everyone’s trying to kill me lately.” He closed his eyes, and sized himself up. He felt like fresh Jell-o, just taken out of the mould. Squiggly, jiggly, and in serious danger of collapsing into a melted Jell-o puddle.

“Idiot!” Irony grabbed his arm—he heard his shirt tear—and hauled him away. It was difficult to tell where they were going; everything was very grey and thick. Up ahead, the red ‘Exit’ (or ‘Exult’) sign glowed faintly red, like a shining beacon in the mist. The floor shook, and Kanza stumbled, tripping over something. He went down on one knee, and almost had his arm wrenched from its socket as Irony kept going, slogging on doggedly, her grip on Kanza’s arm like an iron vice.

“Ow,” Kanza managed, staggering back to his feet and tripping forward a couple more steps.

Irony was humming something under her breath, her expression very fixed. Well, what of it Kanza could see, anyway. Her face was dusted eerily grey-white by chalky concrete. It was an inhuman pallor. It reminded him very strongly that Irony was not in fact a human. This did not bother Kanza; not in a surface oh-my-god-I’m-walking-with-someone-who-isn’t-human sort of way—no, it was more like a very deep, physiological imprint that nagged in a dark, primitively instinctual way, saying, ‘Oh-my-god-I’m-walking-with-someone-who-isn’t-human.’ Only it was all very deep and buried so it was different.

“We’re not unreasonable, I mean, no-one’s going to eat your eyes…mmhmm,” Irony muttered. Her eyes darted to one side and she pounced, dragging Kanza with her. His arm scraped the wall and he felt pain sting along the side. He tried to jerk his hand away, but Irony had taken a hair-pin turn through a doorway. The exit doorway, coincidentally. It almost didn’t matter to Kanza at this point; he was strongly of the opinion that Irony, obviously not the sanest person in the world, had cracked.

The flimsy doors were no match for whatever was ripping apart the school; they were hanging limply in their frames, crushed with the sheer pressure of the buckling wall they’d been set into.

Kanza’s boot toe caught on a chunk of ceiling that was now occupying a space on the floor. It was somewhat confusing if you stopped to think about it, but fortunately Kanza was too busy being hauled away by Irony to really give the matter much attention.

The lawn was burning. It was very pretty, in a demented sort of way. It was like a red and orange sea, sparkling here and there with blue.

Irony skidded to a kind of stop, and Kanza collapsed against the door he’d just been yanked through, trying to get his breath back, eyes closing with exhaustion. The building shook again. There were people everywhere; some had found a different exit, it was obvious enough. There was the smell of smoke, and of burning. Panicked shouts, and the whine of a siren. The unburnable parts of concrete were blurred by the smoke. It was like some kind of hideous nightmare.

“Hurry up, or don’t you want to be burnt to a crisp, too?” Irony’s snappish voice roused Kanza, who opened his eyes with an effort. He was too tired to give her much more than a weary look. His eyes stung from the smoke. He couldn’t see anything but rubble and flames, rising so many feet high. The fire engines should have come by now. The world looked blurry. A huge crowd was beginning to gather in front of the school. Cars were parked lopsidedly. The scene through the flames was the nice mess of frightened humans.

“Let’s go, now.”

Kanza’s arm was grabbed again, much to his annoyance. He didn’t want to go anywhere. He was still trying to get his breath back. He didn’t think he could have moved if he’d wanted to. And he didn’t. He was tired.

“I’m not going to hang around waiting while you get yourself killed,” Irony said angrily, but also a touch desperately. Her eyes were wide. Irony Phillips was a strange sort of person. She was a little different on the inside. Softer than she appeared at first sight. Or second, third, fourth…it took a while to get to the inside. “Look, let’s get out.”

It took Kanza another minute in which Irony sighed angrily and started to pace in front of the narrow strip of concrete. It was getting very hot there. Finally, Kanza stood slightly shakily, swaying back and forth a little dangerously. He wobbled forward, pale, and Irony sighed in irritation. She flicked her hair over her shoulder, grabbing his arm again.

“Your boots are really quite stupid,” she informed him, dragging him forward. Kanza didn’t have a reply. He didn’t have much of anything at the moment, including motivation. The world was in flames. Quite literally.

The path through the fire was zigzagging. Irony seemed entirely oblivious to the fire’s licking touch; she marched straight on, even going so far as to leap over a flickering scrap stretched across the tarmac. Kanza straightened about halfway across, when they reached the first of the surging crowd that was trying to escape. It was clear the teachers had tried to organise some kind of escape or rescue, but it obviously wasn’t working, and there was merely a tide of screaming children. It restored something in Kanza, so that he was walking alongside Irony instead of being dragged, and his pride was beginning to re-inflate. With it came arrogance. Typical. They walk hand-in-hand.

The fire fighters arrived only slightly late; by the time Kanza and Irony and most of the rest of the school had tripped and struggled and screamed its way across the flaming grounds. The school itself looked like a giant cake that had collapsed in on itself, licked on all sides by fiery icing. A concrete cake. You don’t usually see them.

There were the usual odd assortment of paramedics and ambulances, and people staggering drunkenly around in shock. Almost everyone was very pale and an unpleasant shade of grey from the ash. There were undoubtedly a lot of injuries.

Meanwhile, the sky above Midward had turned black with smoke, and the important officials had been notified (obviously). There were TV cameras and newsreporters and the lawyers were already packing up their briefcases and dialling their fancy cell phones.

Kanza was sitting on the sidewalk across from the high school, arms wrapped around his knees, watching with vague interest the remnants of the enormous building.

The slew of traffic made it difficult to get anywhere; there were barricades, up, too, blocking off the entire street. The entire contents of the school was milling around, still panicking.

Kanza had taken the opportunity to find a nice quiet place to sit down. He was considering what it meant to be alive. This was a deeply philosophical question he’d never really examined before. Of course, he’d never been caught in a collapsing building, either. This was a new experience for him. A lot of things were. They were having a profound effect on him. Anyway, they would have on a normal person. With Kanza, it was always a little difficult to tell.

Irony was sitting next to him. Her legs were crossed and she was leaning forward so that her hair hid her face. It was white with ash, the black almost completely covered. She was silent, for once, something that was sadly not being taken much notice of in the present circumstances. Which was a pity, really, because Irony Phillips had rarely ever been silent for more than a minute at a time in her life, barring sleeping, which she did rather infrequently on the whole. Hence the whole walking-zombie theme.

“You know, is it a habit around you, having buildings burn down?” Kanza asked after a very long silence. The wind was tossing around ashes like tiny white snowflakes. They drifted around, spiralling and swirling.

“That didn’t make much sense,” Irony observed, her voice slightly muffled. She sounded a little lost, and her tone carried an odd helpless edge. When she raised her head, her blue eyes were wide.

“It never does.”

There was silence for another minute. A still silence, like a warm afternoon in the sun. Only it was sad.

Kanza turned his head, resting his cheek on his knees, and stared blankly out at nothing. He was thinking. About deep philosophical questions still. He was starting to wonder about his mum, and if she was worried. Probably not. She probably hadn’t even noticed he was missing yet. Then again, this could be one of the days where she was perfectly sane—or at least as sane as any normal person, which was all that could really ever be expected of those poor humans—and happened to hear about the terrible accident at Midward High. If that was what they were calling it. Kanza was slightly unsure on the topic of national disasters, or if this was considered as one. How many people had to die for the government to become involved, anyway? A hundred? A thousand? A hundred thousand? Were lives measured out on tiny golden scales, filling the globes of a billion delicate hourglasses?

Kanza’s imagination was spinning dangerously out of control. In fact, he was actually right at the edge of that very dangerous precipice that means a fall into the depths of unreality; in other words, he was quite close to babbling nonsense about little golden balls and other pathetically hilarious things. Fortunately, he wasn’t aware—at least, not in the part of his brain that was functioning at that moment.

Irony stood up. She stretched a little, shaking some dust off her shirt. Kanza raised his eyes to watch her vaguely.

“Being a werewolf has it’s perks,” Irony remarked. She directed her gaze back down to Kanza. It was another of those unrecorded historic moments; one of the only times Irony would ever be able to look down on Kanza. Sadly, he wasn’t in the right frame of mind to notice anything about this. He was counting the specks of dirt on the side of the curb. “It’ll be fairly easy to get out of here. Hmmm.” She looked thoughtful. “Want to see the apartment? It’s not great, but I bet it beats being stuck here for another hour while they question everyone in the whole school. ’Sides, I could be using to do some research of my own. Brian’ll have gotten out already, I think.” She trailed off, murmuring the last to herself as she scanned the edges of the crowd, which were by now all tightly packed around the multitude of police cars and ambulances. There were a virtual flood of both cops and paramedics.

“Right, then.” She was wearing a manic grin that made Kanza, looking up, immediately suspicious. Irony at her most cheerful was never good. Ever.

***

Awesome Interlude: Number One

In Southside, it was raining molten lead. And there were a couple spontaneously-combusted buildings, too.

Ned Parker leaned against the rope keeping most people from falling off the pier straight into the Pacific Ocean. He was leaning quite far over. He was watching the fifty-foot tall pillar of flame that was rising up from beyond the harbour front with wide eyes.

“Do you think it’s true, then, Henry? What they’re sayin’ about the demon?” he asked breathlessly, looking to the ginger-haired man sitting cross-legged on the ground beside him.

The cross-legged man blinked slowly. He was wearing suspenders and no belt. And a blue dress shirt with sunflowers on it. He looked a little grey. All-over, skin tone grey. This was understandable, considering the fact that he was a zombie.

He raised and lowered one shoulder, rotating it a bit. He smoothed his beard. Then he nodded, also very, very slowly.

“Yeah…I reckon they might be, after all, Ned.” Henry Longstock was not slow; at least, not in the conventional sense of the word. He was slow, just not slow. He did everything slowly. He believed in taking his time. It came from being a zombie. Henry had thousands of years behind and ahead of him. he could afford to take his time. He was taking his time to think this one over.

A drop of something hit the water behind Ned. It sizzled and crackled and a couple fish died. Not that Ned knew that; the fish were very quiet about their dying thing.

“Hmm. Seems ridiculous, if you ask me. We’ve never had a problem with demons before.” He looked at his shoes, which were very shiny. There was a very long silence.

“There’s always a first time,” Henry reminded him. Henry was meditating. He did it ten times a day. It worked wonders. It was totally worth it to be fired. No-one had ever understood the genius of Henry Longstock at that awful desk job. Of course, it was unlikely that anyone in the soup kitchen would understand Henry’s genius, either, but that was just an occupational hazard. And some genius-recognizers do hang around soup kitchens. Really.

Ned grunted. Ned was a grunting sort of person. He fidgeted a little, and almost fell over backwards into the water.

“You think they’ll bother us nonhumans? Not like we ever bothered ’em.”

“One can never tell, Ned,” Henry said patiently, after another long pause.

“All the same,” Ned said uncomfortably, “we’d best be prepared. Mebbe I’d better get my coat. I like my coat. I don’t want it ruined by no darn demon.”

Ned wasn’t the most eloquent person in the word. He was rather frank. But not a Frank. Certainly not. He was an Englishman, born and bred, in 1720. Well, actually, technically he was a vampire now. But an English vampire.

“Maybe you should, Ned,” Henry agreed. (After about two minutes in which a few more fish became battered cod and Ned looked at his shoes). “I’ve seen a good many demon wars come and go, and this is how many of them started. Of course, there’s always a hero who saves the day,” he added thoughtfully. “Well, usually. Most of the time. Quite often. Sometimes. Rarely.”

There was silence except for the soft plopping of melting lead hitting the Pacific Ocean. Then Ned said,

“Yeah. I think I’d better get my coat.”

“Good idea, mate,” said Henry affably.

***


“Here we are.” Irony gave the door a kick, and it opened. Kanza tried to shut his mouth. It was a little difficult, considering he’d just been dragged through every dark murderer’s alley this side of the Pacific Ocean, and then some. Irony lived in the deepest, oddest part of Southside Under Midward.

The stares might have been the worst. While Irony was calmly striding ahead in all her werewolf glory, there were a hundred different hooded and cloaked figures, watching Kanza. He could see them out of the corner of his eye. Southward was, quite literally, the worst of the worst, possibly in the world. Shady-looking men with red eyes and sharp teeth lurked on the street corners, children with demon eyes pranced out of shops.

The sky was billowing sulphurous clouds; it looked like a storm on the horizon. An evil storm. Things were changing, and they were starting here, in the very heart of Midward: Southside.

Southward was a deceptive place. Even the shadows hid shadows. With teeth.

Irony’s apartment was in a damp side alley smelling of mould and decay. It was a fun sort of place to be. Very pleasant and cheering to the human mind.

“Welcome to my home. Me casa est tu casa,” Irony announced delightedly as the door swung open. Her Spanish accent was a little lacking. Kanza gave her an odd look, and then returned his gaze to the apartment. The entrance gaped at him, a dark cavity surrounded by Wellington boots and a cluster of broken toys that littered the doorstep.

Irony kicked aside the Wellies and pranced inside in that leaping, jumping way she had. Kanza strode after her arrogantly, head up. He’d recovered from his brief bout of human weakness, and was once more Kanza, in charge of the world. Or his little bit of it, anyway. It didn’t really help that his shirt was ruined, he was still coughing smoke, and he was walking into a very small, very dark apartment in deep Southside alongside a volatile werewolf who couldn’t make up her mind whether to be enemies or friends. The lion’s den, so to speak. This, however, was no lamb. Kanza would be more accurately compared to a second lion. A much, much bigger lion.

“Daaaad!” Irony’s voice reached Kanza shrilly as he stepped into the most miserable looking room he’d ever had the misfortune to chance upon.

It was dark. That was his first impression. And crowded. Furniture was piled haphazardly all over the room, along with cardboard boxes and random objects.

Kanza inched his way forward, toward the doorway through which he could hear Irony talking. He happened to glance sideways, and immediately regretted it. Unless he was seriously mistaken, something under that pile of towels had just moved.

Irony appeared in the doorway, dimly lit. She saw Kanza and frowned.

“Well, come in, nothing’s going to bite,” she said impatiently. Kanza was privately of the opinion that she was wrong; actually, there were a good number of things that looked like they were going to bite, but he didn’t say anything.

Irony made some vague gestures with her hand, motioning Kanza further inside. He could hear the sound of a television set on somewhere, like some poor lost soul calling out with pleas for help.

Kanza started bravely forward, gathering up his remaining courage. He’d already been through a burning building today; how hard could walking into a werewolf’s apartment be?

The answer lies in the human mind (a complicated and not very sane sort of place), and it is too difficult to ever really explain. Suffice it to say that there were deep stirrings inside Kanza that said exactly the opposite of what the reasonable part of his brain had put forth.

“Er, so, you live here?” he asked, trailing vaguely after Irony through the doorway. He was somewhat relieved to find a normal looking kitchen on the other side. He hadn’t admitted it to himself, but he had been imagining a rather more frightening picture. Still, he would’ve liked a few demons, hiding around the corners or something. He needed something to stab right about now. His left hand twitched. Just a little.

“Yep, this is the werewolf’s den.” Irony flashed him one of her very dangerous-looking grins, and meandered over to the refrigerator, a rather sad, yellowish affair slumped lopsidedly in the corner by the tiny sink. “Want something to drink?”

It felt very odd to be standing there in that very small (minuscule) and very ugly, but still clean, kitchen, being asked by a werewolf (quite politely, for said werewolf) if he wanted something to drink. Kanza assumed, in his vague Kanza-ish way—Kanza being this sort of person—that it had something to do with him. He inspired situations like this.

“If it’s not too much trouble,” he said grandly. Irony flashed him a sour look. “Do you have any coffee?”

“Yes, loads of it,” Irony answered sarcastically. “What do you think we are, pretty boy: a coffee shop?”

Sarcasm again. Kanza felt a flicker of something like glee, a feeling he’d rarely experienced before. He’d decided he rather liked making Irony sarcastic. It was…fun? Yes, fun seemed to be the right word, though he had a little trouble wrapping his brain around it. It just didn’t seem to fit in with keeping his mum safe and killing demons. It was having a hard time fitting itself in between the two. They weren’t the nicest roommates in the world. They were awfully grudging.

“I…haven’t killed a demon in a while,” Kanza announced randomly to the room at large. Irony snorted.

“That’s nice. Actually, yes, we do have coffee.” She sounded very grudging. “I’ll put the kettle on. Dad! Where is he?” She was over at the counter, adding water to the little stainless steel electric kettle, her hair swinging in her face. A couple of bangles clinked against the sides of the kettle.

Kanza stood awkwardly in the doorway to the kitchen. Well, actually, not awkwardly, since he wasn’t feeling awkward in the least: he was feeling resentful as he examined the rip in his shirtsleeve. It was hard to tell whether he could fix the tear in the dim light.

“Are there any lights in here, or do werewolves like living in the dark?” he asked, raising one eyebrow sardonically. Irony turned around to give him one of her famous dark looks.

“Try the wall, demon boy,” she suggested, and her tone wasn’t very polite. She turned back the kettle, at the same moment someone appeared around the doorway from the livingroom.

“Irony? Ire, is that you?” Kanza turned quickly to see the newcomer. A tall man stood, squinting and blinking a little, as though he had been in a dark room and just stepped out into bright sunlight. He also looked slightly lost; his checkered flannel shirt and ratty old jeans contributed to this, as did the spectacles perched haphazardly on his nose, and the ink stains on his bony hands. He looked like a stereotypical bestselling fantasy writer. The kind that stay locked up in a dim office for five hours a day, surviving on coffee and marshmallows, and when forced to venture out of their den, blink rather a lot and look lost and mix up people’s names.

Arnold Phillips was not a fantasy writer. And if he was, he most certainly would not have been a bestseller. He was, in fact, an accountant. Which was actually just as bad, if not worse.

“Dad!” It was surprising the change in Irony. Kanza had expected a sarcastic remark, maybe a flippant look. To his utter shock, she darted across the room to enfold her somewhat bemused father in a tight hug.

“See, I told you she’d be home soon. She was just looking out for the human.” Brain wandered into the kitchen, looking, as usual, more than a little lost and out of place. His hair was sticking straight up and there was ash on his face; it looked a little as though he’d put his finger in an electric socket and then fallen over into the fireplace. “Nasty fire, wasn’t that? I don’t think it was an accident,” he added conversationally, proving that Brain could be surprisingly intuitive while at the same time annoying the hell out of anyone he happened to be around. He was Brain. It went without saying.

“Accident? Fire?” Arnold looked a little lost. “What fire? Brian, what’s all this?” he blinked a couple of times. “Aren’t you two supposed to still be in school. Oh, I’m Mr Phillips, by the way,” he added, suddenly seeming to remember Kanza and switching tracks remarkably fast. He stuck out a hand and smiled cheerily while a somewhat-disturbed Kanza shook it.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Kanza Fey. I…er, go to school with Irony.” He had trouble saying the words; they came out a little forced and sounded remarkably like he was choking. Mr. Phillips didn’t seem to notice, he just nodded, looking happy.

“Ah, I see. Making friends already? But you didn’t tell me about the fire. What happened? Did one of the pyromancers have an accident again?” He directed the last at his daughter, turning to frown at her. Irony shook her head, making her hair bob up and down.

“Nope. School kinda…”

“Collapsed,” Brain supplied helpfully. He ran a hand through his hair. Needless to say, it didn’t help neaten it.

“Blew up,” Kanza corrected. He wished the kitchen’s windows had a view of something other than a graffiti-covered wall, most of which he couldn’t make out from the distance and in the poor light.

He could just make out the words, “Grubs r poor hill” and was trying to figure out what that could possibly mean. It actually said something along the lines of, “Grab ur POO here!” but, perhaps luckily, he didn’t know that.

“Really?” Poor Mr. Phillips was looking very, very lost now. Accountants are funny that way. Give them numbers, and they can crunch like their lives depend upon it. Give them a real-life situation, and they flounder like you’ve tossed them in the deep end. Quite literally.

“Yep. Seriously, Dad, don’t tell me it wasn’t on the news?” Irony snorted. “Ridicluous.” She strode out of the kitchen, leaving the kettle whistling behind her, and after a second, Mr. Phillips and Brain both followed her into the living room. Kanza heard the sound of the TV being turned on.

He stared at the grafitti-covered wall outside the window, feeling suddenly and unaccountably lonely. It reminded him of his mum. He felt a pang of guilt thinking about that. His mum was all alone, possibly knowing his school had just burnt down.

Kanza lifted a hand to his mouth and chewed on a nail unconsciously. He could hear the faint sounds of the TV—there was some nasal-voiced reporter on the other end, blathering on and on and on. It was enough to drive a wooden man crazy. Fortunately Kanza was not really listening.

There was something going on in Midward; this much was obvious by the buildings that kept burning down and the unusual amount of demons that seemed to populate the street. These were all definitely signs of something not so good. It’s never optimum to be stuck in a burning building; and two in so many days is a bit depressing on the whole. One begins to lose faith in luck. Or possibly humanity. One or the either.

And then there was that funny man. The one who’d appeared at Kanza’s house. Apartment. Same difference. He was getting off track here. When he started to try to differentiate between apartments and houses, he was fairly sure he was trying to distract himself unconsciously. He was rather good at that. Or rather, his unconscious self was rather good at that.

To distract himself further and keep from dwelling on the possibility that his mum was in dire need of help or at the very least reassurance while he was not drinking coffee in a werewolf’s house, Kanza wandered into the living room, leaving the silent and depressing kitchen behind.

Irony, Brain, and Mr. Phillips were all perched on one ancient sofa, faces lit by an eerie glow from the television. The sofa looked like it was about to wheeze its last creaky breath and collapse out of sheer exhaustion. It was the only thing that showed even remote interest when Kanza entered the room, and that was only by the fact that it gave off an aura of terror at the fact that he might be coming to further burden it.

Kanza gave it a sympathetic glance; he knew how it felt. Sorry, old friend.

No matter, it gasped back pathetically. You look troubled, boy. What’s the matter?

You know you’re in trouble when you start talking to inanimate objects. You know you are beyond help when they start replying.

Kanza sat down cross-legged on the living room floor. He was too tired to care that the carpeting was awfully dark in colour and could house a number of unpleasant things he couldn’t see in the dimness that seemed to perpetrate every nook and cranny of Irony’s house. He was feeling inordinately exhausted. Having a school collapse around you does that.

I have no clue what I’m doing here, he admitted to the sofa. The TV was blaring something, more news, something about fire and demons. It all sounded fuzzy to Kanza. He put his head in his hands, trying to soothe the pounding headache that had begun. It felt like someone was bashing his skull repeatedly against a brick. It was not pleasant, to say the least.

I’d say you’ve gotten yourself in pretty deep, demon boy, the sofa tutted. Hanging around with sofa-abusing werewolves now. I mean, really: is that any kind of company to be having?

You’re right, Kanza sighed. I really don’t know what I was thinking. Am thinking. How did I get stuck with her, anyway?

Beats me. I mean, she does. Literally. Can’t you see all my stuffing’s leaking out?

Sad, Kanza agreed morosely. The world was tilting rather dangerously. Stuffing. Ahaha. Like a turkey…haha…Thanksgiving…

It was only when Irony turned to fix him with a very puzzled look that Kanza realised he was giggling madly. Irony looked fuzzy around the edges, like one of those bad cartoons.

“Demon boy, are you feeling okay?” Irony began, but she was a little too late, because Kanza had done what all heroes in difficult situations—and oftentimes seventeen-year-old rather arrogant demon-hunters who have just had a school blow up around them—do: he’d fainted.

It was the first time he’d ever experienced something quite like it, and he was vaguely surprised when the blackness hit him with an ironclad fist. It was definitely black. Very black. No stars, either. It was ever so slightly disappointing.

***

Kanza woke very slowly. He felt stiff and sore in that vague way that you do after running several miles, swimming across a lake, and bicycling uphill. Otherwise known as a triathlon. The analogy worked, either way, because that was what Kanza felt like, and he didn’t want to open his eyes, either.

The bed was soft. Well, softer than a hard wooden board, anyway. A little softer. Possibly. Maybe not.

Extremely reluctantly, Kanza cracked first one eye open, then the other. There was no bright sunlight to hurt his eyes, however: only a pale, geriatric luminescence that looked like it had wavered in clutching a cane and moaning.

He was lying on the floor, on top of something that may once have been classified as a mattress. It was probably more like a lump now.

Kanza sat up to survey the blank, bare room he’d been placed in. He’d come to the very logical and extremely intelligent conclusion that he’d been placed here by the fact that he had quite obviously fainted last night, and therefore could not have managed the feat on his own.

The room was very blank. And very bare. It had no furniture in it to speak of, and probably not any lights, either, so Kanza was lucky for the little light that did come in through the high window. Even the window looked barren; it was stripped of its shades.

There were a few trailing disconnected wires along the floor. It looked exactly like the type of room you would lock someone up in if you wanted to torture them. Or something. Only the door was open. That kind of ruined the whole feeling.

Kanza got up a little dizzily. He felt fuzzy all over in general. He stumbled toward the doorway, grabbing the sides to balance himself and looking out. It was a fairly short hall, and it was immediately recognisable as the Phillips’ house. It just had that quality to it. Or it could have been the piles of miscelanious objects littering the floor in regular intervals.

Kanza was somewhat relieved; he wasn’t looking forward to being kidnapped. He felt too awful for that. If it was morning now (and it most probably was, unless night had suddenly become day and that was too confusing even for him), Kanza had been away from Corazon for around twelve hours now. The possibilities of what she might have done were endless. And all equally horrifying.

These thoughts spurred him.

The kitchen was empty. Actually, no wait, it wasn’t: there was something large and furry stretched across the stove.

Kanza blinked momentarily. The cat opened one eye and yawned lazily, eyeing him. it looked like it was sizing up a prospective meal.

Then it closed its eyes and went back to sleep.

This house really was too much. Kanza was firmly decided on that part. He was feeling twitchy. And itchy, too. He needed a shower, and possibly a change of clothes.

Wondering vaguely where everyone who lived in this house was and if it would be alright if he simply walked out the door (or if some hidden ghoul was going to leap down and grab him if he tried), Kanza sauntered into the living room. It was dim and grey and all the shades had been pulled. It was most depressing, which was strange considering Kanza liked dim and grey things. And gloomy things were nice, too. But this room…well, it called for people. And that poor sofa.

Kanza gave it a sympathetic look. He understood it. It had the same sort of problems he did. It was another tormented, lost soul. Kanza didn’t admit the last to himself, though. It would have sounded cool, but unfortunately he thought of himself as more the heroic, golden symbol. Tormented and lost soul belonged on the Flying Dutchman. Not the Midwardian Streets.

It was an interesting mental picture: Kanza on the Flying Dutchman. Someone must have, at some point or other, entertained the notion. It was not Kanza himself, and probably would never be. He was too lost in his own world, created by himself out of spun illusions. He lived in a fantasy world, and lied even to himself. You have to admit, he was good. Very, very good.

Kanza’d never had a father. He was of the opinion you had to make your reputation for yourself. ‘Proud but long-suffering and full of humility and the will to serve the lesser peoples’ painted a nice picture. In reality it was more like ‘arrogant and haughty but full of pride and will to deign to serve the lesser people’. It was all slightly skewed in Kanza’s mind. It had to be.

“Sleep well, pretty boy?”

Kanza jumped at the sound of his name, he’d been stewing around in his own thoughts—a rather messy place to be.

Irony looked like she’d gotten just barely enough sleep to still be standing. She was wearing all black except for pink pom-poms in her hair, which was in a French braid today. Her shirt said, “If you don’t like Jonathan Coulton, I don’t like you.”

Kanza almost expected that. Took it for granted, really. He still wasn’t sure who Jonathan Coulton was, but since Irony already didn’t like him, Kanza, he wasn’t going to worry very much.

“I thought I’d been kidnapped.” Kanza raised one eyebrow. “What is that room, anyway? Some kind of cell?”

“Very funny,” Irony growled, turning on her heel and stalking back out of the living room toward the kitchen. Kanza followed. “Coffee?”

“Yes, please.” He made the effort to be polite; the coffee canister held in Irony’s left hand deserved it, even if the girl holding it didn’t.

Irony grunted and turned toward the kettle.

“You never did get it last night. You fainted. Haha. Fainted. You, a demon-hunter. That is so weird; is that what you guys do?”

Kanza suppressed the urge to kick something. Very hard. He focused intently on his left fist, clenched so tight the knuckles were white.

“No, not really. We kill demons. Big, scary, nasty demons who kill people. You know about those, right?” Saccharine. Think sickly sweet. Sticky. You could have scooped up his tone and slathered it all over a piece of toast. Then eaten it for breakfast with marshmallows and hot chocolate. It was that good.

“Hey, Irony?” Brain looked worse in the morning; if possible, more geeky. He was wearing a pair of iPod headphones, the cords dangling down, and blinking. His hair looked like a pair of finches had been building a nest in it, though he was dressed neatly. Very, very neatly. Go-out-for-a-job-interview neatly. He even had a tie. With a snowflake print on it.

“Oi, the sun’s bright this morning.”

“The sun is supposed to be bright,” Irony sighed, turning back from filling the kettle. Kanza had an unsettling sense of déjà vu, and sincerely hoped he wasn’t about to faint again.

Brain shrugged. “Actually, scientific studies have proven that the sun could be at least ten percent dimmer—or in other words burn with about a twenty-percent less energy—and we’d still be fine here on earth.” He made his way over to the cabinet and took down three coffee mugs while Kanza tried to figure out what twenty-percent less energy was.

“I think you made that up,” Irony said disapprovingly, stepping aside so that Brain could put the mugs on the counter. Brain blinked.

“No,” he said slowly, “no, actually…”

“I know, I know, you read it in Scientific American or Radical Journal or whatev.” Irony waved one hand. The last word caught in Kanza’s brain.

“Whatev?” he asked incredulously. “Who says that anymore? Werewolves?”

“Yes, werewolves,” Irony snapped, jerking her chin up. “And you’re standing in the middle of a houseful, in case you hadn’t noticed, so I think you might wanna shut your mouth, demon boy.”

“Irony, that’s not very polite,” Brain remonstrated vaguely from over by the counter. He was filling the coffee pot now. “Especially since I really think it’s been a while since you were a wolf. Quite a while.”

“Three days is a while now?” Irony seemed to have turned her attention back to Brain. Kanza leaned against the wall, carefully not to tread on a ceramic pile by his foot.

“I…ah, need some fresh air,” Kanza began carefully. Irony shot him an annoyed look, and he started to retreat, moving backwards very carefully in a shuffling motion. Irony rolled her eyes and went back to berating Brain. She did that a lot, Kanza had noticed. Irony liked to berate people. Kanza suspected she would awfully like a fish. He had the strong suspicion she would find a lot of people to whack with it. He’d have to be careful never to mention it to her.

Outside Kanza almost turned right back around and went back inside. It looked like someone had upended the contents of the rubbish bin all over the Phillips’ front steps.

There was a banana peel flopping open up at Kanza. It looked so pathetically mournful that Kanza was mildly terrified. Inanimate objects were finding his sympathies more and more regularly these days.

He started to walk. Walking felt good. Even if it was up the most pathetic-looking alley there ever was. It looked exactly like the book description of a murderer’s alley. Coincidentally, and extremely ironically, about a hundred years ago the sign swinging from the entranceway had read “Murderer’s Alley”. Now it had a bland name, how you’d expect. Greenvalley Street or something. Nice, ordinary. No hint of murder. But the blood of a thousand luckless and penniless souls was ingrained in the hundred-year-old cobblestones, a silent tribute to the thousands who had died here, unnoticed and uncared for.

Kanza wasn’t aware of any of this. He was thinking of drowning his sorrows. Quite literally. He wasn’t sure in what, yet: possibly the rain that had started to trickle slowly from the soggy sky that looked like bread soaked too long in milk.

He wanted coffee. Coffee cured all ills. Only he wasn’t sure he could stand it in a werewolf’s house. He was getting a headache again. A migraine. Werewolves. Why was he hanging out with them anyway? They were sinful. He was going to be dirtied just by associating with that horrible girl. Nonhuman girl.

It was all so confusing. Kanza paused to groan, letting his head drop into his hands. Everything looked dark. And extremely gloomy.

The rain pinged, the only sound. It was very quiet on this morning in Midward. Drops of weather splashed all around, in surly defiance to the morose, silent mood. Someone was determined to get some noise.

Kanza closed his eyes, thinking. He needed to sort out his priorities. He needed to rethink his life. He needed his trenchcoat. Where was it? Oh, yes, at home. With his mum. He should really go home to his mum.

With that vaguely guilty look of one who is ignoring their conscience, Kanza straightened back up and wandered off again. He was in search of either a swimming pool, or a very deep mug of coffee.

It was the absolutely hilarious and dinstinctly not-humorous way of fate that Kanza ended up staring at the sign “Underward Coffee Shop” ten minutes later.

He blinked at the words for a minute. He was sure this had to be some kind of joke. It wasn’t, unless life itself is a joke, which some people do believe, and might very well be true.

Regardless, Kanza allowed himself a morose sigh before pushing open the boarded-up door, still looking remarkably singed, and entering.

There was a very drippy silence inside. It smelled faintly mouldy in that way that very old mostly-wood buildings do when it rains.

The barkeeper-café-owner was sitting on the counter dangling his legs over the side. He was talking. Telling a story.

His audience consisted of two very tired-looking bald men in shabby black overcoats and a talking rat. A talking, clothes-wearing, sword-carrying rat. Kanza was too tired and miserable to care. Besides, you saw all kinds in Midward. Rats weren’t really that unusual.

“Hey,” said the rat.

The two bald men in shabby black overcoats raised identical glasses. They were sitting on the floor.

Kanza drip-trudged over to a table. He was evaporating quite clearly. The last two days had obviously taken a toll on his perfect life. It happens to people who are quite suddenly thrown into reality. Or shocked with an electric rod. One or the other.

He stared dimly at the tabletop. It looked remarkably like the one he’d sat at with Irony… what was it? Two days ago now?

He couldn’t remember. He’d never felt worse. He wondered if it had anything to do with meeting that werewolf. Maybe he was doomed to suffer for his sins.

The drippy silence resumed, and was undisturbed except for a brief cough from the barman, who had stopped talking.

“Eh, wanna drink?” one of the bald men offered finally, looking over at Kanza. “Ya look like ya could use it, buddy.”

“Hands, off, mate, I’ll buy him one,” the rat interrupted, looking severely annoyed. He jumped off the little footstool he’d been perched on and approached the counter. Kanza watched him through a haze of misery. Was this what it felt like to be middle-aged? Good grief, he was only seventeen. He wasn’t supposed to be doing this yet.

“He needs coffee,” put in the café owner disguised as a barkeeper. He nodded sagely and swung his legs a little. He was wearing that old apron typical of a bartender. It didn’t help the fact that he was most decidedly a café owner.

“I think you’d be the one most likely to know where that’s kept,” one of the bald men in trenchcoats suggested. It was hard to tell which—they both looked identical.

The rain dripped on. The café owner got up to go rummage around in the back somewhere. The ‘back’ being a closet that had been transformed into the kind of kitchens you see in Ikea—that would be the minuscule kind with all the matching furniture suitable for a good-sized doll.

Kanza stared at the tabletop and entertained fanciful ideas of suicide. They were very poetic and involved lots of flowery prose and tearful goodbyes while bleeding to death over the body of a fallen demon. And a little girl. A toddler, saved from death in his last heroic act.

This might not exactly have counted as suicide, but for Kanza it was right up there. That was how he was going to go, he decided. Preferably still young and quite handsome, a great tragedy. It was no good to die an ancient, crippled man in a wheelchair babbling nonsense about things that had gone on long before anyone listening had been born. If there was anyone listening. Which might not really matter to the old man at that point.

The rat came over to Kanza’s table bringing a Styrofoam cup of very murky brown liquid that might very well have been coffee. It also could have been a lot of other things, as well. But coffee was the prime suspect at the moment.

Kanza accepted it moodily and downed half the cup in one gulp, in the absent-minded way very depressed heroes have. Not that he was really a hero. Of course not. More like the tragic depressed villain. Or something like that, anyway. He was in the ‘undefined’ category. He liked that.

“Guilt by association,” Kanza murmured to his coffee cup. He was doomed. He was going to suffer, deemed guilty, forever simply because he’d agreed to a drink with that sinful…creature. Werewolf. Abomination.

He seemed to have sunk into an almost-comatose state of incredible despair. Not even thoughts of the deplorable state of his slept-in clothes and the fact that he was almost certainly causing a scene—a really nice one, too, that could have used a lot of photographers and fans—could stir him from this mood.

“Guilt by who?” the rat asked the room in general, looking nonplussed. It smoothed its whiskers and returned to its seat on the stepstool, having done its job of delivering coffee to the demon-hunter who looked like he’d been dragged face-down out of the gutter.

“Assoseelashun,” one of the bald men said wisely. There was a puzzled silence in the tiny café. Finally the barkeeper under the alias of café manager spoke up.

“What?”

“Demon-hunter boy over there, he just said something,” one of the bald men told the barkeeper. The barkeeper who was really a café owner swung his legs against the counter and smoothed his apron that had, Barkeeper embroidered in red letters in one corner. It was odd, considering he was a café owner.

“Huh?” He looked nonplussed.

“Guilty, I think he said he was guilty,” the rat put in. It looked over at Kanza, who was staring into his coffee and apparently not noticing a thing going on around him. He looked firmly ensconced in the depths of despair, as quoted in many works of great literary prowess.

“Eh?”

“Guilty,” the rat repeated. It looked annoyed. It flicked its long, dapper-looking navy blue coat with one slender paw. Then it rummaged in a pocket and brought out a mariner’s compass, which it promptly gazed at as if checking the time.

“Who’s guilty here?” The barkeeper looked more than confused now. He looked totally bewildered. One of the bald men shifted on his chair and cleared his throat a little.

A drip of rain fell with a plop into Kanza’s coffee. He stared at it with unfocused eyes. He was thinking about something. Remembering a time. It was a nice one, with flowers and the smell of pastries baking and children laughing. Well, one child, anyway. Him.

“It’s raining out,” the rat noted, unnecessarily. A couple more drips fell from the ceiling through the very leaky roof to land in random places. One of them plopped down on one of the bald men’s head. It was difficult to tell them apart, both of them being, well, bald men in trenchcoats, with sharp features, narrowed eyes, and distinctive cowboy accents.

“I don’t want anyone guilty in me bar,” the barkeeper announced loudly, and here in itself was finally understood why he was inclined to be called ‘barkeeper’ though he was in all actuality a café manager. Signs can be misleading. Especially ones in Southside Under Midward. It was a pity, really.

“I am guilty,” Kanza announced, finally seeming to catch on to the conversation. He raised his head slightly.

“You look terrible, mate,” the rat said appreciatively and quite unneeded, drawing back with a whistle of amazement.

“Guilty. I shall go before God Almighty and his angels for my sins.” Kanza was still rambling. He lifted his arms up, and in his trenchcoat he looked like some mad heavenly being who just happened to have been dragged face-first out of the gutter.

“I think he’s gone cuckoo,” one of the bald men said, raising his eyebrows slightly. Kanza rolled his eyes upwards beseechingly.

“Save me, Oh Lord, for I know—”

“Oi, buddy, no savin’ goin’ on in my bar.” The barkeeper frowned menacingly. “Yer’s human, an’ I’m not gonna turn away business—hard enough to get these days—but look here—”

The barkeeper was interrupted in the middle of his angry self-righteous speech, Kanza’s devout plea for heavenly aid was halted, and possibly repercussions were safely slammed to a stop, bundled up, and hauled off to be locked behind their respective metaphorical iron bars. All this happened because the door of the café opened, and someone walked in.

The rat half-turned before the rest of them even noticed, stiffening slightly, its whiskers twitching.

“Got comp’ny, mate,” the rat announced, by this point as unnecessarily as his previous comments.

A very heavy, stunned silence descended upon the gloomy café sometimes known as bar and quite possibly also deserving of the title ‘pub’.

The girl who had just entered strode up the aisle between the tables to come to a lofty stop in front of the counter, and the stunned barkeeper residing on top of said counter.

The girl raised one eyebrow.

“Do you all stare here? Where’s common courtesy? Midward, Beauty of the World. More like Swamp of the World.” She snorted.

There was probably a reason for the staring. She was easily the most beautiful thing that had ever been seen this side of the country. No, scrap that. She was easily the most beautiful thing seen this side of the world, including among the pages of assuming fantasy books and on the screens of prosthetic-enhanced films.

It was difficult to say exactly what was so drop-dead gorgeous about her, if one was to use that extremely clichéd term, sadly ruined for any normal folk by the hot dudes walking around New York City; perhaps it was her hair, which was of that luxurious quality commonly seen in shampoo commercials and nowhere else unless one buys oneself a computer program, digitally enhances oneself, and then views it with gaping mouths and lots of very immodest and technically vain comments.

It was a very great pity that she was a demon. Really. She would have made an awesome supermodel, or at the very least starred on all the shampoo commercials. Kanza was thinking these things through in quick succession, but in a much less orderly thought pattern that was probably typical. It had arrows, blinking lights, and very few words. Odd, considering he prided himself on thinking in complete sentences.

“Well?” She was getting impatient. Impatient demons are never a good thing. Kanza got up, a little unsteadily. The coffee cup on the table in front of him wobbled.

The rat turned its head, very slowly. There was a profound, wet silence, heralded by the drip-drip of a persistent leak over the window.

Kanza straightened up. His eyes were blazing with the fury that only demon-hunters faced with demons can conjure. His coat was on slightly askew, hanging open in the front to display the remnants of a once very fine yellow lace shirt. He looked, as the rat had put it, simply terrible. Evil terrible. Like a skeleton. You know, in those crazed horror movies where everyone is always out for revenge.

“Demon,” Kanza declared.

[Kathleen]

SPOILER: Click to show

Chapter Five

The study of cause and effect is a strange one. You can make a decent living paid to pick apart the intricacies of the human mind, and how it functions.

In a high school textbook, it is found at it’s most basic: every student will roll his or her eyes upon reading the fact that If a Peasant Plants His Crops, He Will Have to Harvest Them.

And yet, cause and effect is so much more complicated than that. It is often comparable to the study of the human soul, which in itself is a very strange thing often resembling a jellyfish.

Many people, upon finding this strange thing called cause and effect, deem it, ‘Fate’, or, in other words, unequivocal and irrevocable. Such is the way things go. Others, perhaps more, or less, suited to the insane life human beings have chosen to lead, simply take a frying pan to it, and plunge blindly on, trusting things to run their course and come out, if not exactly Happily Ever After, at least Okay-ish in The End.

Worlds collapse in smouldering ruin quite frequently. Stars explode and tiny people gasp their last poetic breaths, while unbeknownst to them, Mexican gardeners go about their lawn-mowing business thousands of light years away. This does not have much relevance, but admit it: it sounds interesting.

“Ah, so one of you isn’t as stupid as they look,” the girl purred. She turned, also very slowly. Everything was going slowly, because this was one of those extremely climatic incidents where any sudden moves can land everyone in a whole lot of trouble. Burning building trouble. The girl saw Kanza, and her eyes widened slightly. They were like the sky in deepest space. Deep. And space-y.

“I resent that comment,” Kanza said, and his voice was strangely steady, though colder than a dousing of H2O plentified with chips of frozen water. I.e. a glassful of water with ice cubes.

One of his hands was gripping the side of the table, and his browned knuckles had gone white with the intensity of his grip. He looked a little unsteady. He might possibly have been slightly drunk.

There was only the two of them in the bar. Of course, there were other people, but they didn’t matter. Not at that very climatic and extremely plot-relevant moment.

There was Kanza, looking remarkably like one of those dark, tormented, drunken heroes at the exact moment that the population in general discovers they are not really heroes. He had the trademark gaunt face, looking hollow and worn from worrying, the ragged, long black trenchcoat, the un-brushed black curls that tumbled into his face in a way some people might have thought romantic but was definitely merely unhygienic.

Then there was the demon, staring with one eyebrow raised. She had very pointed features, very beautiful, the type aspiring novelists might give to their elven characters. She was wearing a long, silky robe that might have been out of place anywhere else, but blended in nicely with Under Midward’s unusual crowd. She also had on high-heeled boots. Not the best for walking in, but they made a good impression.

Kanza very slowly reached inside his trenchcoat. His brain was slightly foggy, still strung with sticky residue from his dip in the Pool of Misery. He wasn’t thinking very clearly. Well, actually he was, but it was an unhelpful thought. Something like, ‘Kill her!’

It was also tied into avenging his nonexistent father’s death, and his mother’s madness, and fulfilling his destiny, and other such very serious things inclined to shorten one’s lifespan.

The demon girl raised one eyebrow. The demon boy’s hand emerged holding its knife. The rat whistled. The bald men stood up simultaneously. The barkeeper made a noise in the back of his throat that probably meant something like, ‘Hey now, no messing up me bar!’

“The vengeance of angels be upon you,” Kanza declared, and he moved forward faster than a striking cobra. Well, not really, of course, but it’s a nice comparison, and you get the picture. He did move quite fast. The demon girl actually looked surprised for one second, her eyes widening a bit. She ducked and rolled, standard on-fire manoeuvre, only a little late. She’d obviously miscalculated. Never underestimate a semi-mad, revenge-driven, werewolf-befriending, coffee-drunk demon hunter.

Kanza, for his part, slammed into the side of a table. The flimsy plastic thing quailed and collapsed, probably under the mistaken impression that war had come and it was expected to surrender. Well, possibly not so mistaken. It did look like war had come to the Underward Café.

Kanza saw stars, and flailed his arms about for a minute. One was stuck halfway up the sleeve of his coat. He heard some panting underneath him. He rolled sidways, wincing at the stabbing pains running along his side, and the rather bedraggled rat got to its feet shakily.

The demon girl was already standing. Amazingly, her robes had acquired a small rip in the side, and her hair was a little messy. She looked positively livid, and she was standing over Kanza, who was sprawled in a way that was not exactly conductive to staying alive. He was breathing hard and imagining how she intended to kill him.

Kanza, sometimes contrary to appearances, wasn’t stupid. He knew you didn’t anger a strong demon, or you were dead. Naturally, his job didn’t provide a lot of friendly encounters. It was always fight for your life; a you or the demon kind of thing. If it was a weak demon, a simple bogeyman or something, it wasn’t a problem; those were the kind you usually got. But if it was a really strong demon, a demon princess, and especially if it was a very pretty demon… that’s where you started to go wrong.

“You,” the demon girl spat, “are dead, foolish human.”

“Name’s Kanza,” Kanza offered from his position on the floor looking up into the face of an extremely angry demon. “I really prefer it, if you don’t mind. The ‘foolish human’ and ‘pretty boy’s get a little tiring.”

There was a silence. It was a puzzled sort of silence. Very big and very questioning. Pensive. The kind of silence that makes any newcomer knit their eyebrows without really knowing why.

The rat sat gasping, curled up in a corner, trying to make sure all its internal organs were still intact after being crushed by a rather tall and muscular seventeen-year-old human. The barkeeper stood behind the counter where he’d been crouched, and dithered. Kanza lay on the floor in a supremely graceful position—really, it was almost expected—seeming to have completely recovered his senses. Demon-hunting and being sweet enough to make anyone want to slap him was what he did.

Kanza propped his head up with an elbow.

“Aloise,” the demon said finally. She smirked and raised her hands.

Time to be going, Kanza thought. His burning building sense was on full alert after the last few days.

He scrambled up in one fluid instant, grabbed the rat by the scruff of its neck, and darted for the window.

He almost made it to the window. He saw the streak of flame out of the corner of his eye, and was momentarily exasperated. It hit the window in a flaming ball and burst the window in one blinding explosion.

Kanza ducked, threw himself forward, and curled protectively—instinctively—around the rat all at the same time. He didn’t have time to think about the other occupants of the bar; this was action, not thinking time.

There was an extremely pensive silence before the explosion came. It was very quiet and muffled as Kanza hit the windowframe with a decidedly bone-breaking crunch, and he squeezed his eyes tight, seeing only blackness lit by the tiny pinpricks of light behind his eyelids. He worried vaguely that the rat might have gotten squeezed too hard; rats were very fragile, weren’t they?

He had a feeling he was honour-bound, also, to protect this certain rat. It should have been very hard to think about this in one split second while waiting for what could possibly be his death, but strangely enough, it seemed almost too easy. The thoughts were disjointed and jumbled like gumballs in a candy machine; jumping all over eagerly. It was kind of cool, really. Useful for science tests and such. If only they conducted such things in buildings about to blow up around students’ ears.

The explosion was quite deafening. Whatever kind of fire it had been, or maybe it could have been since the window was technically loaded with explosives. Or not. But the barkeeper did have a habit of keeping odd things in his windowframes. You couldn’t blame him, really; he was a giant. Giants have to keep strange things in their bars. They feel more comfortable that way.

I think I’m going to die, Kanza thought suddenly, and it was a very shocking and abrupt thought, come out of nowhere. He hadn’t actually considered it before. Not in an immediate oh-look-hi-Death! type of way. It was disturbing.

“Ach,” groaned the rat weakly, but no-one heard him, because at that moment the whole building exploded outward like a… well, like an exploding building, and it was really quite impressive, complete with rain of molten lead and flaming wood splinters.
***


It was raining broken glass. It tumbled out of the midnight-black sky, falling slowly and silently through the frosty air in a shower of crystalline pieces that scintillated in the moonlight.

They dusted the shoulders of a lonely pyromancer, crunching under his feet as he strode up the dark, empty street. A couple shards glinted in his fair hair.

He stopped, paused, and looked up. It was not a good thing to do, all things considered.

He stood there for a moment, marvelling. Then he swore under his breath, jerked his head sideways, and strode on, quicker than before.

And the glass rained after him, an endless, silent waterfall.

***

Waking up after fainting was really getting to be a habit. And, considering, he’d never done it before two days ago, it was also extremely odd. It must have something to do with that darn werewolf. Everything had gone wrong since he’d met her.

It felt like a very long time since the wall of pain had come crashing merrily on like a stampede of wild horses. Or like, well, a thousand pounds of brick and stone mortar and blazing wood.

It was a little hazy here. Actually, he wasn’t sure he was awake. Everything was…filmy-ish. Not quite like being awake. But it wasn’t nothing, like being asleep, either, and he could tell he was, which generally doesn’t happen when one is sleeping. Unless one is dreaming and happens to—

There was a sudden noise. It sounded like firecrackers. He jumped. Or he would’ve jumped. Startled. Something like that. Only there was nothing there. It was really irksome. It was like being…nowhere. It wasn’t being in a room, even an empty one, and he wasn’t asleep. He was just…there. In this weird nothingness. Because it was black.

“Clever,” he said aloud, testing it out. “It’s…dark in here.”

“Yes, very clever,” a voice returned out of the darkness, and it was one he knew very well. Sharp and sarcastic and sounding a lot like acidic lead. Which doesn’t sound so good. “The lights are off, numbskull. And it’s dark out.”

With this mystery out of the way, Kanza’s brain was able to reassert itself and turn to more pressing matters. He became aware that he was in considerable pain, and whatever he was lying on (it didn’t feel soft) was not helping the matter. His right cheek was pressed against the ground, and it stung.

He slowly blinked shards of glass out of his eyes, and tried to sit up, bent over a little and automatically checking all body parts to make sure they were still intact. There are often small casualties in the way of internal organs and bones after such types of accidents.

It was very dark, as was made obvious by the fact that he had thought he wasn’t awake originally. Kanza was entirely sure where he was, his sense of perception being messed-up by the distinctive lack of light. He was a very orderly person, and he liked to know where he was. Coming to lying on a road in the middle of the dark did not suit him.

Something small and soft slid down Kanza’s chest as he righted himself. He started in the darkness, and was assuaged immediately by a pounding headache and stabbing pains in his right arm, which he’d been thinking about using to support himself.

“No, don’t move, you stupid fool!” Irony was only a little late.


Kanza keeled over again very slowly, like melting taffy. He was vaguely surprised to find himself once more comatose on the road. It didn’t really hurt. His head felt fuzzy through the pounding. It was disturbing to try and think of what he was doing here, and what had happened. A lot like trying to read a book underwater.

“Idiot. You are such an idiot, demon hunter. Are you all this stupid?”

Something soft was touching Kanza’s face, moving down his side, his arm, patting almost gently. He felt his eyes start to close, and began to get vaguely panicked in the way people do when they seem to be no longer in control of certain bodily functions. Hey, if someone tied you to a chair, you’d probably panic, too.

“Why? Why me?” Irony was lamenting her fate to the sky now, in a very poetic fashion that Kanza would have liked, if he hadn’t been drifting. He thought he was probably dreaming now. There were a lot of colourful shapes and fuzzy things, dancing. He remembered the rat. The rat. He’d grabbed the rat. And jumped for the window. Only then the roof had fallen in. Was the rat okay? Was he, Kanza, okay? The answers to these questions were floating around somewhere inside the universe, only the gods were being particularly gleeful and annoying today, and had hid them in hard-to-reach corners and out-of-the-way places a normal human being wouldn’t think to look. Especially not after being hit with a half-ton of concrete, bricks, and blazing wood.

Kanza was only vaguely sure he was alive still. He had the funny feeling that he wasn’t.

It was very grey here. Wherever here was. He could hear Irony very faintly now. She was cursing away under her breath, typical Irony-style. Kanza detected a trace of fondness in his feeling for Irony, and was immediately horrified. Fondness for the werewolf? Who had caused him all this bad luck? Who had doomed him?

Now that demon, on the other hand… she needed to be dealt with, of course.

Kanza’s thoughts were wandering. They were like very short-attention spanned cats tempted with chicken.

She’d had such pretty eyes. Very pretty. The way she looked at him… like she wanted to murder him on the spot, of course. But she was pretty nonetheless. And obviously courageous. A little arrogant. All demons were. Thought they were immortal. Which they kind of were. Unless you had a holy object. Angels could kill demons, too. He’d learned about angels, somewhere. He couldn’t remember where. He needed to get home to his mum. She’d be worrying. How many days had he been gone? Where was the rat? Had he saved the rat? It was an unusual rat. Maybe cursed, too. But he should have saved it. He owed it. For coffee. Or something. A coffee-debt. Very important, those.

***

It was windy here. That was only to be expected, it being a bluff. Bluffs are windy. It’s in the rulebook.

Kanza tugged his jacket tighter around himself, staring moodily into space. It was a beautiful day. A really beautiful day. The sky was that single-shade blue that is simply blinding when stared at for long enough, and there were no clouds.

The wind tugged along briskly, making the stiff bluff-grass stand up straight. They looked like they were having a bad hair day.

The bluff was a steep one. Three steps down crumbling sandstone and say hello to the dolphins for me, please, and could someone make my death sound a bit more poetic?

“I really, seriously do not think you’re human,” Irony grumbled from behind Kanza. She jogged up to him, wearing an extremely disgruntled expression to go with her black leather biker jacket, hobnailed boots (where she’d gotten a hold of those, Kanza was keen to know, and not exactly sure it would be good for him to), and a brilliant pink scarf. Her cheeks were red from the wind, her electric-blue striped hair loose, and she actually looked very pretty. A gentle kind of pretty. It was another of those amazing historic moments that seem to happen so often and are almost never noted by people. Pathetic; heroes are so pathetic.

“I’m human all right,” Kanza muttered. He stuffed his hands into the pocket of his borrowed jacket, wincing as he jarred his sprained wrist, firmly encased in a brace and still whining at every slight movement. The jacket was a long peacoat, technically, a very pleasing shade of violent orange. He’d borrowed it from Irony, and hadn’t really expected better. It clashed awesomely with his skin’s tones.

He was trying to decide whether drowning was an appropriate enough way of losing a teenage werewolf with blue hair. Probably not, he admitted bleakly. She’d probably follow him down. Then he’d be stuck with her for all eternity. It was a hideous thought.

To distract himself, he replayed in his head the scene with his mom, two days ago. It was almost worse, somehow. He shuddered, remembering. He was feeling depressed and gloomy again. Sinking further into the mires of despair.

She hadn’t remembered him. She’d called him ‘Araloud’. Whoever that was. Her own child, her only child, and she hadn’t even missed him. He supposed he should be thankful she hadn’t burnt the house down. He’d had enough of all things burning to last a lifetime. He wasn’t going to admit that it was a pyromancer—a wielder of fire—who’d happened to spy the burning Underward Café and come to his, Kanza’s, rescue. It was pure ill-fate, the complete desertion of Lady Luck—who seemed to be having a holiday on a warm tropical beach right now, probably happily rubbing in some suntan lotion and cutting open a pineapple.

Actually, what depressed Kanza the most was how well Corazon seemed to be getting along without him. He’d thought she needed him. And she probably still did: to buy groceries and pay bills and vacuum and all that menial work. But she didn’t seem to need him in an emotional sense; she hadn’t been worried about him, and he’d been gone for two days, then come stumbling in looking like he’d been run over by a car, followed by a fifteen-year-old werewolf with electric blue hair and her brother who called himself Brain.

She’d been sitting on the sofa, and she’d looked up when they came in, Kanza ready to spew excuses and tender I love yous, and she’d said,

“Araloud. What are you doing here?” and gone on to babble some nonsense Kanza hadn’t listened to. He’d been standing there, and for the first time in a while, the faint echoes of tears were awakening in his dry eyes.

That hadn’t lasted long, of course. Crying was a sign of weakness. There was no crying aloud for demon-hunter boy. This was all too frequently the mindset of teenage boys, especially ones who consider themselves tortured souls and misunderstood saviours. You know the type.

“You know, your mom said stuff about angels,” Irony remarked, making Kanza, who’d been too busy stewing in angsty memories to notice her approach, jump.

“Angels?” Kanza made the word sound as much like a synonym of ‘dirt’ as he could possibly manage. It was hard, considering the word, and he was applauded for it. Metaphorically, of course. In a symbolic sort of way.

“Yeah. Like, I thought that was cool. Even though she called you Araloud, and me Milk. Milk is kinda a cool name, if you think about it.” There was a moment of silence. Blustering, windy silence. Kanza turned over Irony’s words in his head. They sounded strange, as words that were not delivered sarcastically or bitingly always did coming from Irony. “My mom’s dead, I think,” Irony offered after a moment. Kanza turned slightly, to look at her. She was staring straight ahead, the wind making her hair blow forward so that it whipped around her face crazily. She bent suddenly and picked up a stone.

“I’m sorry,” Kanza said, for lack of anything better. He suddenly couldn’t think of anything to say, and it felt strange. He was not usually at a loss for words. But things had been a little different between him and Irony since she’d rescued him from a burning building, then sat in the waiting room of the hospital—well, sat was the wrong word: fidgeted and twitched was more like it—making all the staff nervous (that girl is very strange…looks a little…wild if you know what I mean) while they stitched Kanza up. He didn’t remember much of it, being quite close to meeting a lot of people who’d been dead a long time. Irony hadn’t volunteered information about it later, either. Kanza got the vague notion she must have called her dad, but beyond that he was rather hazy.

Kanza had a grudging respect for Irony’s dad. He’d told Kanza a lot of stories that Kanza had heard whether of not he wanted to listen, being trapped in a bed and very much unable to escape Mr Phillip’s anxious stare and rambling life stories. He’d seemed to think he was in some way responsible for Kanza. Kanza, for his part, had been on some rather strong drugs at that point, and hadn’t thought a lot of anything for a while, except for the fact that this was the first time he’d ever been in a hospital, and he’d decided he really, really hated them. They were funny places that were supposed to make people well, but usually just ended up accidentally killing them instead.

The rat had disappeared, too. Kanza wondered where the rat went. He had the secret, horrified feeling he’d accidentally killed it, and it made him squirm with carefully hidden guilt.

“I thought she… er, left,” Kanza said after a minute, trying to be tactful. Usually he was good at it, but no-one was very good at anything around Irony. She was kind of like an anti-magnet: she came through and everything fell to pieces in her wake.

“Yeah. Right. When Dad got bitten.” Irony swung her arm back, and threw the rock in one quick motion. It soared over Kanza’s head, and he turned automatically to follow its progress as it sailed in an arc through the sky, dipping and then falling until it went out of site over the other side of the cliff. “She left us. I always thought it was because she didn’t love us. I was five, and Brian was six. Isn’t that kind of cruel, don’t you think?”

There was another long moment of silence. The wind ruffled Kanza’s hair, and he brushed it flat again with a hand. There was no-one else in the remote vicinity; it wasn’t a great day to be walking along the cliffs above the Pacific Ocean. Kanza liked it, though, even if it was rather sunny. It was cold, and that was good enough for him.

“Of course Dad bit us. He didn’t know what else to do.” Irony had her head down, Kanza couldn’t see her expression, but he sensed that this was hard for her to say, and he wisely kept his mouth shut. There were a lot of biting remarks and acidic comments lining up and clamouring for their turn, but he found a strange revulsion when he examined them. They were grinning manically and trying to take control of him. His throat tightened.

“I didn’t know what happened. It was weird. He told us… I mean he told us. And Brian was okay with it. He said—told Dad he wanted to be just like him. Dad, I mean.” Irony was examining her hands now, very carefully and slowly, splaying her fingers out in front of her. “I don’t know. I was kinda little. I missed Mom. I wanted her to come back. I guess… she didn’t want to be around Dad after he Changed. That’s sad, you know?” She looked up, and Kanza swallowed. “I mean, she should have loved her husband more than that, right?”

Kanza didn’t have any words. He looked up, tracing the flight of a hawk across the sky. It was a very pathetic-looking hawk; instead of soaring, it sort of meandered along, occasionally getting blown off course and struggling to right itself. Kanza felt sympathy for it; that was how he felt.

“So then…so then we moved around a lot. Werewolves…well, most people don’t like them. So we were looking for a pack, I guess. We drifted around. I can remember moving a lot. And then we came here. I’ve been a lot of other places. I kinda like Midward.” She shrugged. “Yeah. It’s interesting here. Lots of interesting people.”

“Yep. That’s Midward. Lots of interesting people.” Kanza was a little surprised to hear the words that came out of his own mouth; they sounded awfully chipper and falsely cheerful. Irony turned to give him a disgusted look, one pencil-thin eyebrow raised slightly.

“But you know, seeing your mom…”

There was potential in that sentence. Anyone could see it, glimmering there at the end, a little shiny golden hook just waiting to catch the right words. They would be profound, heart-warming, moving. They might bring tears and expressions of gasping hope, and an opening of souls, a sharing of emotions. Trumpets were raised, a sweet joyous singing began…

“…well, it reminds me it could’ve been a lot worse. I got off lucky.” Irony nodded in a decisive way, and metaphorical doors slammed shut at once, cutting off the chorus mid-word, trumpets ground to a halt. It was closed and sealed up and locked and the little golden hook hung there for several years until eventually it became rather tarnished, but no-one had ever cared, and no-one cared then, either. There would be no sharing of souls tonight. It was awfully sad, in a way. If you cared for that type of thing.

“I guess you could think of it that way,” Kanza agreed at last, in chilling tones. There was a very, very cold silence. A thirty degrees below zero silence.

“Yep,” Irony affirmed, and she started to walk, back along the bluff. Kanza followed after a long moment.

“Ever notice a lot of things blow up around you?” he called to Irony’s back, as she slip-slided in her funny boots, sliding around on the loose sand.

“Yeah; that never used to happen,” she called back. Her scarf fluttered a little. Kanza looked up at the sky and uttered some very despairing words. The end result was only that he tripped, caught himself on the edge of the very flamboyant peacoat, and stumbled around before finally righting himself, his ribs protesting that they were not up to this sort of stuff yet.

Kanza limped into the car park, breathing raggedly from the steep climb up the sandstone stairs. It was all very picturesque; a very pretty bluff looking out over the ocean. The car park was not so picturesque. That was where reality set in, and it did it with a hunk of concrete housing the world’s worst sanitary system, and a lot of metal railings to keep the wild cars from escaping while their owners were enjoying a nice walk on the bluff.

Irony was standing over by the concrete house boasting the world’s worst sanitary system. Or, in other words, the bathroom. She gave Kanza an appraising look.

“You look like someone beat you up in a sandbox,” she observed.

“Shut…up,” Kanza panted. He didn’t have his full breath back yet; it was harder to make steep climbs with a cracked rib. He dusted some sand off his wide-legged pants with a quick movement of his hand.

Irony reached up and flicked a leaf out of his hair. It caught Kanza by surprise; he saw her hand out of the corner of his eye, and momentarily froze as it brushed against his head.

Irony withdrew her hand, leaf fluttering to the ground, very casually, immediately focused on peering at the watch on her wrist. She did it all in an infuriatingly nonchalant manner that made Kanza literally seethe inside. It was rather ironic, all things considered, since Kanza himself had a casual, careless attitude that the rest of the population found maddening. It was the irony or fate that had tossed a certain werewolf girl his way. Or possibly the gods were just bored and wanted a little fun.

“I’m going home,” Kanza snapped. He turned on one heel, and began a very long and very forced march across the car park.

He stared determinedly straight ahead in determination as he walked very determinedly across the flat tarmac.

He made a concerted effort not to look back once as he marched straight across the car park and out onto the flat sidewalk. The cars rushed by at ten billion miles an hour, blowing the edges of his coat up and tossing dusty wind into Kanza’s face. He squinted his eyes against the grit. It was a good excuse to stand fuming for a minute before he turned and started stalking off along the concrete.

***

It was dark in the apartment that night. There was a sad, lost air to it. It hung dry and stagnant in the air, like a taste of something that had left a long time ago, and the ghost of it was still hanging around wistfully.

Kanza navigated the dark hallways with a feeling of something like gloom, locking and shutting the door behind him. Outside it was sharp, the air had a bite to it that signalled the coming of colder weather. Kanza wasn’t as interested as he might have been. He was thinking about the bluff incident. And the demon. The demon that haunted his dreams. Awake, and asleep. Now that’s dedication for you.

Maple Story Lane was quiet. It was dark, and shadowed.

Kanza probably shouldn’t have gone out tonight. Not with two cracked ribs and enough bruises that he couldn’t sit down without wincing. He’d done it for the sake of obstinacy, because the protector of the city must go out at all times. Something so small as being injured never keeps him in. It was a matter of honour, of pride and self-sacrifice. Some people know them as stupidity and ridiculousness. Don’t be fooled.

The lamps were beginning to be lit. Figures detached themselves from doorways, from corners. Demon-hunters moved about quietly in the dark, taking over the city. Their city. The night’s protectors. City at night. Dark city.

Kanza floated among them. He drifted in a sideways fashion, not really expecting to end up anywhere. Maple Story Lane was one of those quiet, suburban streets that looks quaint in the daylight. It was named for the huge, leafy maple trees bordering the neat sidewalks.

“Evening,” a deep voice spoke next to Kanza. He turned smoothly, not in the least bit startled, to find a heavyset man standing beside him. Kanza thought the man looked vaguely familiar, but it was hard to tell in the flickering light from the man’s lantern. Demon-hunters generally formed alliances, had specific groups they hunted with, but Kanza was no ordinary demon-hunter. He was not general, and he was not about to make friends with some brawny man. Besides, he wasn’t paid by the government, like most demon-hunters: he ran a private business. He did it for his own pleasure, and out of his humbleness for helping the city. And also because the Black Market paid a whole heck of a lot more than the stingy government, and took on anyone who could bring a demon back dead.

There were no tests, no resumes to submit or exams to pass or degrees to earn when you worked for the Mafia. Well, technically not the Mafia. If Midward had a Mafia, it would be a joke. It was a joke.

“Good evening, sir,” Kanza returned politely. He inclined his head a bit, and then started to walk. The man followed.

“Bad times these. Heard of all those accidents, have ye? Burnin’ buildings left ‘n right. Terrible state of things these days.”

Kanza ruminated on the man’s words as he strode forward, his favoured choice of midnight black cloak flapping out behind him so that he looked like some dark, mysterious figure striding through the night. Or just an odd sort of bat.

“Demons. They’ve become an epidemic,” Kanza said at last. He glanced sideways at the man, trying to judge his reaction. He wasn’t sure how old the man thought he was. Most people naturally assumed Kanza was an adult or better. It was something about the way he acted, so very superior-seeming. It was irritating at best, downright infuriating normally. Most people could stand Kanza for about five minutes before handing over a lot of money and escaping. Irony was the exception, and the odd one, too.

“Only too true, young man. I suppose you went into the business recently? It’s taken quite a turn. Government’s actually doing something about the city for once.” The man snorted. He matched Kanza’s pace easily, taking long strides to keep up though he was much shorter than Kanza. It wasn’t really surprising; most people were. Just as most people were less intimidating than Kanza, and a good deal less self-assured.

“No, actually. Family business,” Kanza lied coolly. He was very good at it. The end of Maple Story Lane loomed. Something lurked around the corner, hiding behind a pile of rubbish bins, lumps in the darkness. A hydrangea bush sprawled its sad and defeated way into the street.

“Ah. Father-to-son type of thing?”

“And daughters. Of course. Why wouldn’t my sister be qualified? She comes from a family of the best,” Kanza argued distractedly. He was craning his neck as he walked—almost ran—trying to see the street sign. He thought it was Mooncrescent Ave, but he wasn’t sure. Kanza wasn’t entirely sure why he was lying like this. Not that there was any reason not too—the lies came like maple syrup over waffles, and they were just as sweet, pleasing, and easily accepted, but it was rather worrying. He’d never claimed a sister before. Never wanted one. Kanza usually only claimed something that either sounded much better than reality, or that he wished was reality. There was something else on his mind right now.

“Ah. An unusual young man, I see.” The man was keeping pace easily—far too easily. It was a little worrying. Especially since Kanza couldn’t see his face. It was too dark, and the man was wearing a hood. Come to think of it, everything about this situation was just slightly worrying. Kanza sped up a little. Maple Story Lane looked suddenly very empty and dark. The man’s lantern swung on his arm as he jogged. Kanza threw desperate glances toward the streetsign, trying to read it. He wasn’t sure if it connected to Mooncresent Ave, or Baker’s Street. And unfortunately, the difference might mean life or death. Baker’s Street was a dead end. It’s not very safe to have someone running next to you—chasing you into—a dead end. This nagging through caught at Kanza’s brain.

“So,” he gasped, short of breath at his incredible pace and trying to calm his hammering heart. It was just possible this actually wasn’t a dangerous situation, merely a friendly demon-hunter wanting conversation on a lonely night. Most demon-hunters weren’t all that sociable when hunting, but this could be an exception. There were always exceptions. Of course. It didn’t have to be a mad man intent on driving a boy into an alley to murder him. Definitely not. Haha. The idea was laughable. Or it would have been if there hadn’t been so many people trying to kill him recently.

“So,” Kanza tried again, “so caught anything…specific…yet?” each word was punctuated by a little gasp. He was getting exhausted quickly at this pace. And the man marched along silently next to him, oblivious to Kanza’s apparent discomfort.

“Nothing yet.” The man turned slightly, and flashed Kanza a very white smile, teeth glinting in the light from his lantern. It was terrifying in a very real way.

“Just…looking for company?”

“Yes, one might say that. You’re an interesting young lad. I think I should like to hang around you for a bit, get to…know you a little better.”

You should never trust anyone who says ‘young lad’. Really. It’s a basic rule. Everyone knows it. And you should definitely never trust anyone who wants to get to ‘know you a little better’. That’s just a messy thing waiting to happen. Especially when you’re jogging along a very dark street in the dead of night that appears to be completely deserted, though it had a lot of people on it just a few minutes ago. The disappearance of large amounts of people are always worrying; humans have animal instincts that occasionally kick in, and when they do they’re usually not wrong.

In other words, if your buddy runs, you should run, too.

“I met…a…rat, once,” Kanza offered in between pants for breath. Almost to the corner. He sped up just a little. It was amazing the man hadn’t seen something wrong yet. Maybe he was just stupid. Or evil. Or cruel. Or a mad axe murderer. They were all pretty viable options at the moment. Kanza racked his brains frantically for something that would help him get out of the situation. He wasn’t going to outrun the man, and even if he did turn out to be just an over-friendly demon-hunter, he wasn’t too keen on this point of view at the moment.

It was another one of those very pin-point moments, where one word said, one small detail, will change the whole picture irreversibly. Sometimes this includes whether of not someone is going to die that night, as well.

If the sign had read Mooncrescent Ave—if Kanza’s memory was not faulty—then a lot of things might have happened differently. As it was, Kanza took a hairpin turn, jarring his arm so that his sprained wrist accidentally twisted the wrong way and sent several interesting electric shocks of agony throughout various body parts. He looked up, and the light of the strange man’s lantern flew up in an arc, encompassing the sign so that the metal flashed dimly in the light. And the words on it were Baker’s St.

It was a life-changing incident. Or a life-stealing one. Kanza jolted to a stop around a funny-looking bush. He tripped, tried to regain his balance, and went down in an odd sort of tumbling-roll, instincts kicking in immediately so that he flung out several limbs, yanked away his cloak, which was threatening to choke him, and reached for his concealed knife, all in a few seconds. Unfortunately, he only really had about one second. His incapacitated arm made him slower, so that he was fumbling along the left side of his shirt with his right hand, and he was only on his knees, head and hand throbbing with the pain, light flashing behind his eyes, when the cold steel was pressed against his throat.

It was a very, very dramatic way to go, actually. Kanza would’ve appreciated it, had he been in a better position. ‘cold steel’ was a very nice description. He’d always wanted to use it somewhere. Unfortunately, no matter how dramatic, horrific, and interesting, it was still an incredibly inconvenient position to be put in to, as Kanza now found.

He was kneeling on the blacktop in the dead of night, on the corner of Maple Story Lane and Baker’s Street, panting a little and waiting for his vision to return to normal, a knife at any moment about to end his breathing for good.

“You know nothing, little boy.”

Kanza squinted upwards, trying not to move very much. Any little bit might have been rather detrimental to his health. In a very real way. it was dark, and his vision was still spinning. Not that he would’ve been able to see much anyway; the big man stood directly in front of him, leaning over him, completely blocking his line of sight.

He racked his brains, trying to think of something interesting to say. Something witty and totally cool and very heroic. All he could think of was if it would hurt to die this way. Morbid thoughts like those.

“You are in too deep. You were warned,” the man continued softly. Kanza tried to swallow without actually moving. His eyes were starting to water from staring so widely open. He wondered if anyone would care particularly if he died. Probably not. He wasn’t sure his mum would even notice. Someone would, of course, when she forgot to pay the electricity bills or something. But that wasn’t exactly pressing on his mind right now.

“Fail and you die, that’s how the game works around here.”

Kanza wasn’t listening. He knew he should probably be planning a very heroic and charming escape, complete with raised eyebrow and touché remark as he departed by swinging his way over the street sign or something. Nothing occurred to him.

“I’m really sure you should be listening to me, little boy. It’s dangerous out here, these days. Potatoes and stuff.”

A weird and wild thought occurred to Kanza then. It was so ridiculously ludicrous it couldn’t possibly work. In a million years. It was impossible. Seriously.

The knife went flying through the air in one of those very pretty arcs, glittering in the moonlight. Very ludicrous and simply ridiculous plans have a way of turning out suspiciously excellent. A lot of people have theories on this. They often have a lot to do with things like quantum physics and how the universe works. That’s what they say, anyway. Kanza had a different theory. It was more like a philosophy. It went a little like this: do what you have to do, it’ll all work out in the end.

The day it didn’t all work out was the day Kanza wouldn’t really care anymore, because he’d most probably be dead. It was a little sad, considering, but it was okay. If that was how you liked to live, then you risked everything and ended up with a little and sometimes a lot.

“Curse all werewolves,” Kanza grunted, swinging wildly and stumbling back in a half-crouch. The man reeled back, smacked across the face. The knife clattered on the street. Something shrieked nearby. The bushes fluttered, the man uttered an oath. Kanza ducked in time to avoid the flying object. Whatever it was, he was sure he didn’t want it in him. It struck the sidewalk, bouncing, and Kanza heard something crunch. The wind ruffled his sweaty hair, stuck to his forhead. It was probably curling wildly by now. It did that when it was wet. His hair.

He retreated very slowly. The man was howling in pain. Kanza was well-aware there was a dead-end ahead of him and a lot of very dark houses surrounding him. He didn’t want to stir up the inhabitants. For one, they probably would not thank him for bringing an assassin to their doors. For another, he wasn’t really sure he was all that keen on getting innocent civilians into trouble. It wasn’t their fight, after all.

Some odd kind of shadow detached itself from the side of a house. It was an ordinary-enough looking house. Most houses on Maple Story Lane were. But demons were everywhere. They had no respect for ordinary people, or ordinary houses. Midward was not called the City of Demons for nothing.

A long time ago, someone had promised it would be okay. It was one of those flickering types of memories that invaded Kanza’s mind at exactly the wrong moment. This time, it was odd, and he started at it, like he’d been brushed with a feather. He twitched sideways, momentarily taking his eyes off both the man, and the shadowy shape he was sure was reinforcements.

Another object came flying his way. he caught it out of the corner of his eye, and was vaguely annoyed. He was busy trying to remember this edgy memory, that kept flickering on the edges of existence, winking in and out, dancing.

Duck. Turn. He caught a glimpse of the shape now. Teeth, lots of them. Some scales, he thought. At that point, he really wasn’t sure. For one, it was dark, and for another, there are some things you just never really need to see.

There are some times when running is appropriate. It is usually deemed an act of cowardice. This argument is then counteracted by the people who mention very snootily and wittily (in their opinion), that it keeps you alive longer. They’re both true. But what is truest of all is that there are simply times to stand your ground, and there are also times to turn and run as fast as you possibly can. It was one of those running times right now, and Kanza was giving it all he had.

Down one street, duck, turn, run, look at those dumpsters. Well, look out for them, anyway. Twist, ouch, scrape, pain, stumble, think that was a rock…look, shiny! Oh, just wind chimes, keep going, stoppit…run…

Kanza moved like a blur. He was good at running. Very good. He wasn’t actually sure where he was going. He had a feeling it would have to be somewhere safe. He wasn’t particularly fond of the idea of home at the moment; there seemed to be too many people trying to kill him. The burning buildings were worrying. And obviously he’d upset that rather high-ranking demon the other day. Those had to be her henchfolk. Nothing else made sense, obviously.

So he couldn’t go home. Not if he wanted to keep his mum safe. And of course he did. He wasn’t going to go back just to lead them to her. Demons had amazing tracking abilities; wherever he went, he was sure to be followed. Which left only a few options.

It was not without a little surprise that Kanza found himself in front of a familiar door less than ten minutes later, completely spent. He could barely find the energy to haul himself up the steps. His legs felt like jelly, and his head was throbbing in time with his heart, which was going super-speed while he gasped for breath. It felt oddly repetitive. Déjà vu but not quite.

He slumped down in a kind of half-crouch, propped up against the door. His left leg was resting on one ancient-looking Wellington boot that looked like it was covered with some kind of odd fungus.

He was too tired to really care, and too tired to make an effort to find a doorbell or knock on the stupid door. His eyes were closing. The lids felt like lead. Why he’d ever decided to go out this night, he really wasn’t sure. But at least there was no school tomorrow. No school. Haha. That reminded him. It’d been all over the news, of course: Huge accidental fire, sources still being investigated. There were numbers. Lots of them. They’d made no sense, staring out at Kanza from the TV. They were just numbers, digits. People who had been stuck, who hadn’t been able to escape. It was one of the lowest points of humanity that he hadn’t been able to muster any feelings for them. Those trapped kids. It could have been him. He knew that. It didn’t bother him how it might have. It could have been him a hundred times. When it was him, he really wasn’t going to complain. In fact, he might actually be a little glad. It might be nice to escape this, finally.

The door opened with a wrench, and Kanza tumbled in, cracking his head on the doorframe before he could properly right himself. He sat up straight, dizzily, trying to focus. It was dark outside, but a flood of light was suddenly in his eyes, dazzling him.

“Are you…sleeping on the doorstep, demon boy?” She sounded incredulous. It was not surprising. Irony usually sounded one of two things: Sarcastic, or incredulous. Oftentimes both.

“No, running,” Kanza mumbled. He really was so very tired…really, really tired. The kind of tired where everything feels a little grey, and you find yourself slowly nodding off where’re you’re standing, then jerking back awake as you begin to fall.

Kanza shook his head groggily, trying to clear it, and squinted up at the extremely bright light. Irony’s face looked down at him out of it. It was such an odd picture, Irony’s face surrounded by light like an unearthly halo, and Kanza started to laugh hysterically. He couldn’t stop, either even when Irony rolled her eyes and stepped back, allowing him to stumble drunkenly into the house.

“Did you try whiskey or something?” she asked disgustedly, surveying him. She was wearing a maroon dressing gown with purple stars embroidered all over it. It was a very unique look. It said Irony all over. Well, actually, it said Jon Coulton Sings Me to Sleep in yellow letters, but it’s all about the metaphorical.

“No, I told you, running,” Kanza responded irritably, feeling just slightly more awake. He looked down at himself distractedly, twitching aside the cloak, which looked just about ruined. He knew he shouldn’t have bought it; it was ridiculously impractical. Of course, style and practicality rarely ever went together, and add flair and you had a total nightmare. All you had to do was look at Irony. She was a classic example of fashion gone wrong. Of course, she thought she was a classic example of fashion the Only Right Way, but opinions differ. On almost all subjects. Especially with Kanza and Irony.

“So. What’re you doing back here, demon boy? Huh? I thought it was, “Avoid Irony” now.” Kanza looked up to see Irony’s arms folded very determinedly across her Jonathan Coulton’d chest. She was frowning ferociously in a way that suggested Kanza might want to find a cup of coffee very fast. He swayed a little just looking at her, and had the urge for something very sweet and sugary. Preferably with a lot of calories and caffeine.

“Can’t go back to the apartment, demons are chasing me,” Kanza sighed. He was getting really tired of standing. Literally. He thought he was going to collapse momentarily. His legs were feeling weak at the joints and in serious danger of simply folding up. The light inside the entranceway of Irony’s house was about twice as bright as Kanza would have liked, too. It was making him blink a lot.

“And whose fault is that?” Irony raised one eyebrow.

“Yours,” Kanza said promptly, earning himself a disbelieving snort.

“Oh, really? You’re the one who hunts them down, pretty boy. I’d’ve thought you’d’ve realised that by now,” Irony returned loftily, possibly earning herself a prize for most contractions put into a sentence ever. It was impressive, for Midward, home of Do Not and Cannot and I am.

“Look, it wasn’t my bar that burned down.” Kanza gave Irony a pointed stare. She returned it much more fiercely.

“My bar?”

“Your pyromancer.”

“I don’t believe we ever discussed the second time. A gas leak?”

“You heard the news, how should I know? I was in a hospital,” Kanza retorted, brandishing his incapacitated wrist for emphasis. “Ow.”

“Demons, pretty boy, don’t think I don’t know it.”

“Demons are as common in Midward as thieves.”

“As common as garbage.” A hard stare from Irony.

“As dirt,” Kanza deferred, just for the sake of argument. It made him feel faintly bemused in an odd way. He usually didn’t go out of his way to argue. He was right, and that was that, everyone else just shut up.

“I think we both know it was more than that. Who’s chasing you?”

There was a brief silence in which Kanza contemplated several possible answers to Irony’s questions. None of them were even close to the truth.

“If you have coffee,” he said at last, very slowly, “then maybe I’ll tell you. I haven’t had a proper cup of coffee in…” It was infuriating to find he’d lost count. He wasn’t really sure when the last time he’d had coffee was. It was too long ago.

“Deal. Coffee, and then you talk,” Irony agreed promptly, surprising for her. It was unlike her to agree to something so quickly; more like stretch it out for hours bargaining and turning it around so it sounded more like you were agreeing to her. She must have really wanted answers.

“Coffee,” Kanza repeated, pressing his hands together in mock prayer and whispering it to the heavens. This was rather steep for him, considering he wasn’t one to take praying lightly. But then, coffee was not to be taken lightly either. At all.

“So what you’re saying is,” Irony began slowly, tracing a finger around the rim of her coffee mug, “that demon came in and just…blew up the café? But first some weird guy showed up at your apartment and starting talking about angels and people coming to get you and the world exploding?”

“Yep, exactly like that.” Kanza steepled his fingers together and rested his chin on top of them. He was feeling alert and very wise at the moment. He’d had enough coffee for several all-night shifts, and enough caffeine to stay up for a week at least. Possibly a week of bouncing around nonstop on a pogo stick. His eyes were suspiciously bright, and he was having trouble controlling his right foot, which was tapping out an incessant rhythm on the lino of Irony’s kitchen floor.

They were both seated at the table, across from each other, in an appropriate amount of space separating werewolf from demon-hunter. Or, evil from good, if you viewed it Kanza’s way.

Irony’s kitchen was cluttered in a very nice way. it gave the appearance of a very old lady gathering all her knick-knacks into her apron because they were spilling out. There was a lot of random rubbish strewn everywhere, too. All horizontal surfaces were covered in a variety of items that included rubber bands, clothes pegs, scotch tape, pencils, coffee mugs, To-Do lists, receipts, and guinea pigs.

The last puzzled Kanza just a little. They seemed to be quite content foraging for paper on the centre island. He was itching to ask Irony about them, but had kept his peace for now, a difficult thing to do, considering.

The time was measured out in slow ticks by the analogue clock over the stove, which, incidentally, also had its own clock, a digital one. The analogue clock did not agree with it, however: they were two minutes and at least three seconds apart. It was driving Kanza crazy to watch them slowly count the minutes, three seconds apart.

“Soo…” Irony said slowly, and Kanza nodded, just to have something to do. It earned him an Irony Glare, and he subsided feeling a lot like rolling his eyes. “You have a demon after you. And I should care, like, why?” She raised one of her pencil eyebrows.

“Well, I should think it’s a matter of honour,” Kanza replied smoothly. He gave her a significant look. Or what he hoped was a significant look. It may have been more like a caffeine-high look.

“Honour of what? And what makes you think a werewolf’s honour means anything?” Irony folded her arms across her chest in a very decisive manner, raising one eyebrow. It very clearly meant that a werewolf’s honour probably didn’t mean much. At all.

“’Defend thy honour, and upon thy honour, defend the honour of others’,” Kanza quoted. Irony gave him a disbelieving look.

“You can’t actually expect me to believe you actually got that from somewhere.”

“Actually,” Kanza said, somewhat haughtily, gathering his ruined cloak around himself in an attempt to make himself look somehow more imposing, “it’s a demon-hunter classic.”

“I’m sure.” Irony snorted, rolling her eyes. Kanza gave a quick glance out the window in irritation. It was still very dark. He hadn’t realised it, but he was tensed, almost as if ready to jump out of his chair and bolt at the slightest sign of danger. It may have had something to do with the coffee, or just the fact that demons were at this moment probably sniffing out his trail.

“Actually,” he said with a haughty glance toward Irony, “it’s written in the Book. I think.”

“You’re Muslim?”

Kanza had no reply to this; it wasn’t really worth it. He got up abruptly, pushing his coffee mug away. He towered over Irony, standing, and it made him feel oddly good. He was finally larger, taller, stronger…better than she was.

Irony looked up at him. “Seriously, though?”

“What do werewolves believe?” Kanza sighed, giving up. He remained standing; he liked it better, though it made his back ache and his legs were reminding him he’d just run the equivalent of a marathon in double-time.

Irony raised her eyebrows. “What an odd question,” she mused, sarcastically of course. Irony did most things that way. it was only in moments of extreme stress that she reverted to what most people would think of as ‘normal’. On the bright side, it meant in chaotic or emergency situations, she didn’t panic, but actually become more raional. On the dark side, it meant getting along with Irony was an acquired skill: one that took practise.

“I mean, surely you think something. Or do you? You are animals, after all.” He purposefully used the jibe, but he never actually got to observe the results, because at that very moment, a lot of things happened at once.

Irony stiffened. That was not the most interesting thing, though. The front door smashed open with the sound like splintering wood. Which actually it was, funnily enough. And someone came pounding down the stairs.

The three things coincided perfectly with each other, so that Irony was rigid with very wide, very blue eyes, Brain was paused in the doorway to the kitchen, frozen with his arms and legs outstretched in all directions, his head turned slightly toward the direction of the front room. Kanza was half-turned, still standing in front of Irony at the table.

Thoughts of extreme terror were going through his numb brain. They went a lot like, “Demons, oh, God, they’ve found me, save me please no what’ll happen to Mum help oh God I knew this was going to happen.”

“Duuuude,” Romeo said, looking very serious. The pyromancer stepped past the wreckage of the front door to stand beside the motionless Brain. Romeo was wearing a blue bandana, a thick wool coat, and pants with silver studs running up the sides. His long hair was tied back with a strip of black leather. He looked like an escaped rock star.

“You could have knocked,” Irony sighed.

Chapter Six

“Actually, I was in rather a hurry,” Romeo deferred politely. He glanced behind him, at the splintered wreckage that was the front door. It looked a lot less like a door and a lot more like kindling now. “You see, there were demons chasing me. I rather think they intend to burn down this house. So really, I just did you guys a favour,” he finished thoughtfully. He rubbed his bearded chin with one hand, looking pensive. “Now there’s no need to open the door when running for your lives.”

“Well, actually, I should think we’d want to use a less obvious way of egress, if we’re running away,” Brain put in. He slowly retracted all his extraneous limbs until he was standing straight again, then reached up and smoothed down his hair. It didn’t really help much; he was wearing pyjama bottoms and an old Red Sox t-shirt. He still managed to look incredibly geeky, however. It might have been something about the very innocent, anxious, and incredibly intelligent look he was wearing.

“What’s an egress?” Irony asked no-one in particular. She shoved back her chair and stood up. She looked remarkably calm and composed, and didn’t even glance toward the entranceway, where the remains of her front door could be seen, leaking out in tiny fragments.

“The exit,” Kanza answered Irony automatically, his brain supplying the answer before he could think. He blinked, unfreezing, pulling away from the blind terror. It was really quite annoying, he found. He was irritated with himself for being afraid like that. If it had been demons, he’d’ve been no use.

Actually, if it had been demons, he probably would have unfrozen a lot quicker and started throwing witty comments around while killing a half-dozen at a time. It was what he did, and he would have done it just as well at this time than any other. But at the moment, he was profoundly embarrassed with himself.

There was a sort of loud silence in the kitchen. One of those silences that are somehow incredibly full of sound while having none at all. It is a profound mystery, and an intriguing one, too.

“I think we probably ought to tell Dad,” Brain suggested. Irony was chewing thoughtfully on one of her braids. Actually, the little silver bell at the bottom of it. She looked up and blinked in surprise.

“Oh, yeah, definitely.” She nodded in agreement. “Is he asleep, or what?”

“I’ll go get him,” Romeo offered. Irony gave him a faintly surprised look, and Kanza gave up entirely on any preconcepted ideas he’d previously had.

“Good idea, but don’t use any fire this time, please,” Irony said distractedly. She was frowning and chomping feriouciously on her hair decoration, obviously in deep thought.

Kanza swallowed hard and tried not to panic. When people said, “Good idea, sure, go ahead, wake up my dad, but don’t use any fire this time, okie dokie?” that’s when it was time to start worrying. He figured they’d just about reached that time.

Romeo just nodded good-naturedly, and swung past Brain to thunder up the stairs.

[Kathleen]

SPOILER: Click to show

“Hmm. I think we’d better get dressed,” Irony announced. Brain looked puzzled.

“Mmm?”

“If we’re running away,” Irony explained patiently. Kanza stared at her in disbelief. Running away, in his opinion, was something that one did instantaneously, without a split second’s thought or dithering; it was an immediate decision. It was not planned. “Where will we go do you think? I don’t know where.” Irony bit her lip, frowning. She traced a small circle on the table with one hand. She was still sitting quite calmly at the table, apparently not bothered in the least.

“Rathiel’s,” a hoarse voice put in. Kanza turned to see Lucien Phillips coming down the stairs. He looked tired; his narrow face was drawn and there were dark circles under his eyes. He was wrapping a dressing gown around his lean frame in the manner of someone who has just been awoken rather rudely by use of just hotter than normal temperatures. To give him credit, Romeo hadn’t actually used fire; at least, not in close proximity. He’d merely used the heat genereated from the fire. A completely different matter. Honestly. Take it up with any lawyer.

“We’re going to Rathiel’s,” Lucien said again, using a complete sentence this time. He studied his daughter’s face as he descended the last step, carefully skirting Brain, who was looking thoughtful and very immobile. “Irony?”

Irony shook her head, looking slightly dizzy. “Hey, Dad. I guess Romeo told you?”

Lucien sighed and rolled his eyes, moving past Kanza to rummage around on the counter for something. Kanza edged slightly backwards.

“This isn’t the first time I’ve had to run away from things, Irony,” Lucien muttered, then seemed to notice Kanza. “Aha. Hello, young man. You seem to be hanging around her an awful lot lately. I suppose you’re involved in this, as well?”

“Possibly,” Kanza allowed. He wasn’t too keen on providing any hardcore evidence to be used against him at the next opportunity. He was almost touching the refrigerator now, his back against it; he could feel the chilly metal exterior through his shirt-and-cloak affair.

“Odd, isn’t it,” Lucien mused, retrieving what appeared to be a thermos, “I never thought I’d be running away in Midward. I thought, finally, we’d belong here. No more running from the mobs with fire. Now, instead, we’re running with the mobs with fire.” He shook his head, chuckling sadly. He was one of those chuckling-type people; you had to like him, you really did. He was just that type of person. You had to like him, and you had to chuckle along with him. You also felt just a little bit sorry for him. It had to be hard raising two children as a lycanthrope unable to get more than an informal minimum-wage job (health insurance definitely not included) and always getting kicked out of various apartments and town. If you believed in this stuff, too, it had to weigh on Lucien that he’d bitten his own children, condemned them to the fate his own wife had run away from. That was a little heavy, though. It made the bread not rise right.

“We run away frequently, Dad,” Irony muttered distractedly. “I’m going and change. I don’t want to run away in my bathrobe,” she announced.

“Good idea,” Kanza muttered under his breath, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. Irony must have heard, anyway, but she pointedly ignored him, walking past jauntily, the hem of her Jon Coulton fangirling outfit swinging a little. It was notable that Irony really looked quite good in even that strange ensemble. But then, considering what Irony normally wore, it probably wasn’t even that strange.

“Mmm. I don’t suppose we get to bring anything, right?” Brain looked disappointed, he sighed slightly. “I just got this new computer set up.”

Lucien looked up from filling the thermos with water at the sink. “You could bring the USB stick,” he suggested mildly.

“You know I bring that all the time,” Brain said disgustedly. Lucien shrugged and turned back to his filling.

“You’ve only been here three weeks,” he pointed out, in a very quiet, even tone. Lucien was a quiet, even person, not given to extreme displays of emotion either one way or the either. Depressed or happy, he was pretty much the same, give or take a few grimaces, sighs, and weary expressions.

“On the plus side, we won’t have to go back to that school; I really hated that school.” Brain turned back to the stairs and began to climb them in a doggone manner. He looked very geeky. One would almost expect him to start quoting TV shows other people had never heard of. But actually, he was more the type to quote scientific studies no one had ever heard of.

“The school’s burnt down, anyway, idiot, we haven’t gone in three days,” Irony sighed, appearing at the top of the landing and beginning her descent. Kanza wisely kept his mouth shut, choosing not to interfere on this matter of school and burnt things. Romeo was back, smelling of mint and cologne. His hair was wet.

“Quick bathroom run, never know when you might freshen up next, when you’re on the run,” he said cheerfully, catching Kanza’s look. “I should know,” he added. “I’ve been on the run a lot before. For some odd reason, whenever something burns down, they always accuse me,” he added thoughtfully. He frowned. “I wonder why that is?” he mused to himself.

Kanza privately thought he knew exactly why that was—it’s not exactly rocket science to look for the person who routinely makes fire blaze up out of nowhere when something’s on fire. Especially when that person is standing around with an entirely innocent expression on his face and no eyebrows. Not to mention slightly smoking hands.

“Weapons?” Irony suggested. She paused at the foot of the stairs, turning to glance toward the gaping hole that had once been the front door. It looked a little lonely; a hacked-out bit in the wall. A draft of cool air came through the oddly-shaped hole. “Romeo, don’t you think that might actually give them an advantage? It took you at least what, three seconds to break it down? That’s enough time to…”

“…brush your teeth?” Romeo suggested, leading Kanza to very strongly suspect the pyromancer had some serious hygiene issues. Actually, he just went a little…faster…than most people; he was really quite concerned with personal upkeep and grooming. Possibly a little too concerned. Obsessed one might say, really.

“Nah. It’s okay. I kinda…held them up. You know, so we’d have a little time. That’s why they’re not here already. I gave them some…trouble.” He waved one hand in a vague way, the light from the kitchen lights sparkling off the half-dozen rings adorning his fingers. He was one of those people who have more than a little magpie in their genetic makeup.

“Oh, I expected that.” Irony flashed Romeo a very white grin. “If you hadn’t, I’d be disappointed. Something small?”

A tiny crease appeared between Romeo’s eyebrows. “Small? My dear, my name is not Romeo for nothing.”

“Drama queen,” Irony agreed, which sounded a little odd, coming from someone who was wearing a sparkly pink t-shirt, black leggings, and a red wind cheater. (Her shirt said Got Jo Co?).

“I do have a taste for the dramatic,” Romeo acknowledged with a gracefully accepting nod. “A certain flair, you might say. My own personal style.”

“He’s weird, for a pyromancer, is what he means,” Irony clarified, displaying once more her much-gentler side to Kanza, who was trying to sort out the conversation while knowing that it was pretty much hopeless at this point. In fact, Kanza was almost sure at this point his whole life was a lost cause.

“I like your shirt,” Kanza said abruptly and smoothly, for lack of anything better to say, and because for once, he actually got it. Sort of. Well, that it was a play on some long-abused and long-suffering joke, anyway. That part he had down.

Irony, perhaps at a loss for words for the first time in her sixteen years of life, did not reply to this. She was saved needing to think up a suitable response by the fact that Romeo suddenly stiffened.

“Think they’ve put it out,” he said, breathlessly, which was odd considering he was standing in the middle of a kitchen, doing nothing exerting or physical at all.

“Wytch Fire?” Irony demanded, a panicked look appearing on her face. Romeo nodded. He was panting, and his face had gone a shade paler as he struggled with some internal battle. “Let it go,” Irony suggested. “It’s not worth it.”

Romeo winced. “I think we’d better be considering exit strageties, and perhaps speeding up just a little,” he said. “This is…rather…difficult. Lovely one.” He added the last almost as an afterthought, and there was a brief silence. There was puzzlement as to what exactly it meant, the word ‘lovely one’ being construed in several different ways depending on how you felt that day.

“My name’s not Lovely One, but I get the point,” Irony said after a minute. She turned toward her father, who was already nodding.

“I’m right here, and I do have ears, you know,” he said with a tired little smile. Irony gave him a look that quite clearly said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about but I’ll just go along with it to make you happy so we can get out of here quickly before a horde of revenge driven demons arrive.”

“Upstairs window?” suggested Brain, appearing very suddenly right next to Kanza, who jumped and blinked. He was not used to people just appearing like that. But then, he wasn’t used to werewolves, either.

“Windows are often an optimum way of egress,” Kanza noted. He flicked a speck of dust of his cloak, a pointless effort, really, and a motion wasted: The cloak looked like it was made of dirt and clay and gravel and numerous other things at this point.

“I think we can just use the front door,” Lucien put in mildly. He screwed the cap on the thermos, and straightened, brushing his lank brown hair out of his eyes. “It’s not as dramatic, I admit, but really, what’s the point in scaling a wall when you don’t have to?” He looked around at everyone, smiling slightly, and was rewarded with four equally blank, uncomprehending stares. His smile faltered just a bit.

“Really, kids these days,” he sighed. “Go on then, lead the way. The bedroom window it is.”



It was a few moments later that Kanza found himself striding down Oxford Lane in the company of three werewolves and a pyromancer. It was around one a.m., judging from the sun (which was nonexistent, actually), and Kanza’s watch confirmed this fact.

He was unconsciously still looking for demons. It was so deeply ingrained in him to do so when it got dark that without thinking he was scanning all shadowy corners, glancing rapidly from shadow to shadow, from patch of darkness to patch of sad excuse for shrubbery.

There may have been demons about, but they were possibly all scared off by the werewolves in the party. Or maybe the pyromancer. Possibly both. Romeo was whistling the Hallelujah chorus to Handel’s Messiah under his breath. It was an interesting tune for this occasion, one Kanza knew very well, and he found himself humming along, very, very quietly. He missed his piano.

Other than that, there was a kind of total, dark, moonlit silence punctuated only by the regular thump of boots, sneakers, and other forms of footwear meeting the flat tarmac. It would have been more impressive if it was, say, a cobbled bridge, but unfortunately almost all modern roads were made of tarmac. There were few cobbled streets of any kind in Midward, it being a totally modern city. Or pretending to be, anyway. Though it was highly likely that the previous occupants—alligators, hinkypunks, etc., Midward had been a rather nice swamp—had had no use for cobbled bridges. Or quaint little walkways made of flagstones.

“Seen the news lately?” Romeo asked Kanza companionably. Kanza blinked and looked toward the pyromancer, who was striding alongside him. Various things rattled and clanked on Romeo’s person, hidden underneath the sheepskin coat.

“No, I don’t usually watch the news,” Kanza said carelessly. He checked for his knife at his side.

“Hmm. Well, it’s usually not so great—bunch of idiots blathering—but actually they do coverage of burning things quite well,” Romeo said conversationally. He managed to make himself sound quite normal while hurrying along a dark alley. He did it almost as well as Kanza. Not quite—but then, Romeo didn’t have quite as much practise. He had a considerable bit less. Romeo had an inclination toward the dramatic. That included things done in broad daylight in large open squares with lots of fire.

It was all very dark and spooky, or it would have been, but Kanza was used to this sort of thing.

“So, the news?” Kanza prompted after a moment, when Romeo did not offer anymore information. The pyromancer’s dim outline had become still and thoughtful, while he continued to march ahead. But he did it stiffly. Like, as if he were still standing straight, but then picked up his feet and started to walk. It’s a sort of trick.

“Oh, yeah, well, they’ve got a whole list of ‘accidents’ so far, and dude but is it ever long!” Romeo whistled, earning him a whisper of “Hush” from up ahead, where Brain, Irony, and Lucien were walking in a tight knot.

At this point it may have been a great wonderance to any passersby who happened to be out on such a night, and saw this odd party walking, why they did not simply use a car. Actually, it may have been much easier and more convenient all round to use a car, except for the fact that Under Midward was one of those places where you really didn’t want to use an automobile of any sort unless it was a very, very skinny one. Midward had been built rather a long time ago, and Southside had never been renovated from the old extremely narrow streets look. Possibly the government could not see pouring money into the ‘nonhuman’ (and therefore inferior) part of the city; or possibly they had simply not known, never having ventured into Southside themselves.

As it was, the people of Southside, Under Midward, were quite content to take the train and the monorail. All of which required walking a moderate distance to reach.

Kanza was wondering vaguely why they hadn’t yet reached the train station when he began to notice a change in the streets they walked through. It wasn’t a very noticeable one: it merely seemed to go from slightly-decrepit looking to full on ancient and crumbling. Not in an old-fashioned, romantic way, either: more in an ancient, dirty, rotting way. Pathetically unpoetic, but what are you going to do?

It was one of those really rotten side streets, filled with decrepit old buildings who look like they’ve breathed their last a lone time ago, and are mere rotting bodies left there, crumbling mortar and concrete. There were bags of trash left on the streetcorners, glinting dully in whatever moonlight happened to be there.

Most of the stores along the street had had their windows smashed out by some group of bored teenage hooligans, possibly on a Saturday night when the movie theatre had neglected to provide sufficient entertainment, and the mall was closed.

There was a pizza parlour on the corner. Its windows, too, had been smashed out, but as if in direct defiance to this and the fact that there was a heap of trash bags in front of it, it had a lit-up Open sign in one glassless window.

Kanza was not bothered by this; it seemed all quite normal to him. He’d been walking Under Midward for years, after all, in search of demons. Not to mention the fact that his neighbourhood was little better; Under or not, Midward was as bad as any large city, and had the coinciding dumps, the ‘bad’ neighbourhoods, the places you wouldn’t want to—but were highly likely to—be caught dead in.

“Aha, here we are,” Lucien said softly, somehow managing to be heard quite clearly; it was pretty much silent, eerily so, in this dank corner of the world, to be poetic about it. Kanza stopped beside the curb, noticing that a piece of it was coming off in a great chunk, revealing the supporting iron bars beneath it.

Romeo struck a wide stance, fiddling at his belt for something. Meanwhile Lucien appeared to be juggling things.

Kanza stood alert, mentally concocting a checklist. He was careful to include the location—between 52nd and 50th Streets, take a right, find this little dump of Under Midward on the street called Grand Ave, which was certainly no longer Grand, if had ever been—and possible routes of escape. The latter were not many, admittedly, and were fairly obvious: Run up the street and away from here. That sort of general thing that even the most dull people can generally manage very well.

“Ah,” Lucien murmured, and Kanza looked up distractedly, busy memorising the configuration of the buildings. He had a picture memory, and could recall with perfect ease if he so chose. Which he did often, to the concealed frustration and teeth-gnashing of anyone who happened to be in the vicinity.

“We’re going in there?” Kanza raised one eyebrow, jerking his chin toward the pizza shop. Romeo shook himself off like a dog out of water, a very disconcerting sight, and straightened.

“Yep; Rathiel’s,” Brain answered, when no-one else did. He sounded remarkably cheerful.

Lucien stepped up, skirting the garbage bags carefully, and edged toward the crumbling door. It slouched in its frame pathetically, almost like it was just being barely held-up.

Kanza gained the sidewalk and stood still while Lucien rummaged in his pockets for a minute, checking distractedly around his coat. Several things jangled inside.

Irony was standing very close to Kanza. He could feel the faint heat emanating from her body, and was slightly surprised; it was in direct contrast to the clouds his breath made, misting in the air in front of him. Werewolves must have a better heatability.

Unable to quiet his curiosity, Kanza turned his head ever-so-slightly, studying Irony’s face. It was set in the dim fluorescence from the Open sign, giving a yellowish hue to the pale skin.

A bell jingled as Lucien set his weight against the door, and pushed slightly. Kanza was momentarily distracted; he looked away, and a second later Irony was pushing past him to gain entry to the little pizza shop.

It welcomed the members of the party with an almost tangible glee; Kanza swore he could feel its excitement as they walked one by one through the sagging door. This poor shop had not had new visitors in a while.

Kanza had the one wild thought that what if it accidentally ate them? What if they never came out?! He was briefly terrified, shocked at himself, and shook it all off as he ducked under the lintel, trying to avoid being knocked across the top of the head. It happened all too frequently. He was used to it, by now, being tall and thin had its ups. And its downs. Or, more accurately, bumps.

The inside of a pizza shop generally looks like…well, the inside of a pizza shop. This one looked like the inside of a pizza shop that’s been vandalized, and then moved in by a pack of werewolves. Which was, incidentally, exactly what it was. Interesting how these things happen.

The counter that had probably once had a line of customers—not long, of course: Southside Under Midward rarely had long lines at any of its stores—had been demolished. There was nothing left to mark its place but a rough patch of floor outlined in industrial-strength glue.

There was a lot of furniture sprinkled around in random places. A sofa that looked like someone had eaten most of its contents—it reminded Kanza a lot of the Phillips’ sofa, and he was starting to see suspicious alikeity.

Several chairs and a TV set had been pushed against one of the smashed-out windows; it was boarded up and someone had painted on the boards with red paint that could have possibly been blood. Most of the words were quite obscene.

“Rathiel?” Lucien called, moving forward. Kanza realised he’d been staring, and hastily straightened to a more attention-looking pose, as if he’d been standing calmly the whole time. He noticed Irony looking at him. she looked away quickly when he caught her staring, and he filed this odd incidence away for analization upon having more time.

Romeo coughed descreetly, and Lucien half-turned, but at that moment, someone came through the swinging door across from where the counter had once resided, probably out of what had once been the kitchen.

A reed was the impression Kanza got. He was used to sizing up people—or demons—very quickly, usually having no more than a couple of seconds to decide whether or not they intended to kill him.

Upon closer observation, one would probably notice right away that the woman, besides being tall and thin, was slightly stoop-shouldered. She had a narrow, closed face, the kind that makes one instantly suspicious, and a lot of bright red lipstick. Her hair hung in jagged clumps to her shoulders. It was black, and it clashed extremely with the brilliant yellow, open necked blouse she was wearing.

She was drying her hands on a towel, and she raised one eyebrow in a way that reminded Kanza instantaneously and strongly of Irony.

“Ah, Lucien.” Her voice rasped like nails across a blackboard—one of the most unpleasant sounds one could ever have the misfortune of hearing. “It was about time you came.” She gave a thin smile, revealing very pointed teeth. Kanza shifted his weight to his other foot, unconsciously checking the firm weight of the dagger strapped to his side, safely hidden under his cloak and shirt ensemble (word for put together things).

“Orynn.” Lucien looked none too pleased. “I don’t suppose Rathiel’s home?”

Orynn gave Lucien a mysterious look—actually, it was more of a sick look. It looked horrible, and Kanza had to fight not to look away. It took all of his training (look them in the eye, stand up tall) to keep staring straight ahead. Beside him, he felt Irony shift a little. Brain was apparently reading the graffiti on the boarded up window, and Romeo was inspecting his fingernails. He looked up, catching Kanza’s glance, and gave him a conspiratorial smile.

“Don’t pay attention,” he whispered, almost too low for Kanza to hear. He then returned to examining his fingers very closely.

“You’ve brought a pyromancer, too. That one again. You, young man.” Orynn’s shrill, rasping voice seemed to reach Romeo from a long way away. He looked up very slowly, blinking a little, and gave Orynn a vague, bemused sort of smile.

“Yes, ma’am?”

Kanza was expecting something like this, but anyone else probably would have fainted from the sock. It was amazing the change in Romeo; he became a very innocent, polite young man. It was bewildering, one of those things where you simply had to block out unnecessary details, or be overwhelmed by the sheer impossibility of it all. Most people simply had to ignore the fact that a six foot three pyromancer in clothes like that of an escaped rockstar was talking incredibly politely to them, and using the word ‘ma’am’.

Orynn, however, much the pity, did not seem taken in.

“You’d better watch yourself, young man,” she snapped, shaking her dish towel in Romeo’s direction. “You’re going bad, and you know it.”

Lucien slowly sighed and covered his face with his hands. Romeo looked very earnest.

“I’m sure, ma’am,” he said carefully, nodding. Orynn gave him another glare, then her beady eyed gaze travelled across the whole party.

“What, you still let the girl dye her hair, Lucien?” She frowned ferociously. “I’ve told you a thousand times if I’ve told you once: you’re ruining her character. Just look how she dresses!”

Privately, Kanza thought Orynn wasn’t doing much better in the dressing department, but he wisely kept his mouth shut, just standing there. Irony was wearing a very curious expression; tight lipped and silent. She gave the impression of a fuse just about to blow.

“Yes, I couldn’t agree more,” Lucien sighed, very tiredly, peeking out from behind his hands, which were splayed across his face. His eyes were very blue, Kanza noticed. The same colour as Irony’s.

“And who’s this?” Orynn caught sight of Kanza, and her expression, were it was disapproving before, became positively furious. Her nostrils twitched, flaring out. “Just look at him,” she spat, turning to Lucien.

“Orynn,” Lucien began, lifting his hands helplessly and shooting Kanza a helpless look, “Orynn, he’s—”

“I don’t care if he’s the king of Persia,” Orynn interrupted testily, “he’s wearing dirt! Dirt, Lucien! Dirt, in my house!”

Kanza, who had very much expected some comment about his being a human, was taken aback.

“Ma’am,” he said carefully, stepping forward slightly, “Ma’am, I can assure you that this dirt is not really my fault. You see, I was caught in a very grevious accident…”

Kanza spun stories like some people spun sugar. He concocted fake events that sounded more realistic than the truth. He easily made the truth seem like an entirely different thing, with just the use of one word here, another there. He nudged the story in an entirely different direction. He didn’t often have a chance to use his natural born skill, but when he did, he laid it on thick. Even Irony was gaping by the time he’d finished, and Orynn looked positively dumb-founded. Even as the party watched, her face, in its tight, pinched lines, softened until it was almost pretty looking, something that surprised Kanza, who hadn’t expected to find anything remotely beautiful in this woman.

“My poor dear boy, how truly awful,” she cried, in one of those voices that are surely real only in movies and very old fashioned books, the paperback kind that are full of happy families, and ‘poor dear boys’. The sad thing was, that really was real for Orynn. She’d spent too much time cooped up in her own house—pizza parlour—to be considered technically normal anymore. Her view of the world was slightly warped, in a the last time I went out was twenty years ago sort of way. Living in a ruined pizza parlour in Southside, Under Midward, does that to you. She probably still thought people did say, “How truly awful!”

“Not really, ma’am,” Kanza deferred smoothly, basking. He was doing what he did best—earning admiration and being once more the centre of attention. He found he’d quite missed it over the last few days. Irony gave no one but herself the spotlight.

“No, no, Lucien, I can’t believe you; letting this poor child run about in this state. Honestly, whatever has happened to you? I can’t believe you’re actually related to me. You’re a disgrace of a brother.”

While Lucien rolled his eyes and mouthed prayers to the heavens, Orynn toddled off on very thin legs ending in very small feet, back through the swinging door and into the back room.

They could hear her banging about in there.

“Hurry up, Lucien!” she called shrilly, and with a very weary sigh, her brother motioned them all to follow. They herded in a silent sort of line toward the swining door. Kanza took the opportunity to examine the shop closely as they passed. It looked sad, in a very depressing way. everything looked ten years too old and decrepit, losing its lustre. The shop reeked of despair and happiness lost. It made tears prick at Kanza’s eyes; he knew the feeling well, almost too well.

He was very nearly crying by the time he made it through the swinging door, overwhelmed with emotions stronger than he could combat in their moody angstiness. He had to blink sharply, the back of Irony’s t-shirt blurring into sparkling pink stars.

The back room was a lot…bigger than it seemed. A lot more back ish, too. Very confusing, actually.

“One of those bigger on the inside things?” Kanza asked no one in particular. Irony turned around to give him a very funny look.

The back room looked like a house. A very small house, but a house nonetheless. It looked as sad as the pizza parlour itself.

They were standing in a cozy sort of living room, complete with plumped pillows on sofas and knick knack shelves. There was a small kitchen aside from it.

There were a lot of rooms leading off of the main room. It looked suspiciously large. There was no sign of Orynn, but there was a lot of noise coming from somewhere a little distant.

Lucien sighed and moved ahead to put the backpack he’d been carrying down on the kitchen table, an odd affair cluttered with enough paper to make several trees cry, and enviromnamentalists wail and wave their hands.

“I think she’s decided you’re a lost chick,” Lucien said, somewhat appologentically, directing his words at Kanza, who was examining the general sagginess of the sofa. It seemed to be a habit with Lucien’s family; he wondered which eccentric great-grandfather had started the ancient sofa collecting hobby.

“A lost who?” Kanza turned to frown at Irony’s dad, expressing his general cluelessness for the metaphor that had just been used.

“Lost chick,” Lucien repeated, then, seeing Kanza’s blank expression, hastened in the overly apologetic way of people his type to explain, “I think she thinks you’re an orphan, sort of. Abandoned stray.” He blinked. “That’s sort of redundant, isn’t it?” he murmured to himself, then shook his head, giving Kanza one of his famous tired smiles. Kanza was starting to notice a pattern in Irony’s family. They all had a sort of trademark thing. “She hasn’t been out of the house in twenty years,” Lucien added, once more apologetically, shrugging his thin shoulders a little and confirming the very sad fact that Orynn Phillips had been a lonely lady miser in a ruined pizza parlour that was bigger on the inside for far too long.

Kanza nodded. He was beginning to feel faint traces of loneliness and pain dragging him down. He tried so hard to avoid these things. They sounded great in books, the lonely tortured hero was always the most emotional, heroic character, but in real life they were more than a drag. They were a ten-ton pound of concrete hauling you down to the bottom of the Caspian Sea. And they were beginning to get to him.

He shook himself just a little and tried to give Lucien a smile. It came out as a sort of pained grimace, the way those things usually do. Irony snorted under her breath. Kanza had no energy left to return her sympathies. He merely looked away.

“Sucks,” Romeo murmured under his breath, the only remotely perceptive one in the room, and Brain looked up from muttering the Quantum Theory to his hands to blink with wide eyes.

At that moment, Orynn returned, sidling into the room in a very odd sort of way. She was holding a bundle of clothes in her hand.

“The water’s quite hot now,” she said warmly, addressing Kanza and completely ignoring the rest of the occupants of the room.

Having to heat water sounded quite ominous to Kanza, but he only gave Orynn a very charming smile, his very best one, and accepted the pile of cloth that was dumped into his arms.

“Straight down the hall and to the left. That’s the bathroom, I mean.” Orynn giggled, a very horrifying sound, and Irony looked up sharply, wearing a horrified expression. Lucien made a motion with his hands that only Brain could interpret, he being the only ever interested in telegraph signals. Where Lucien had picked it up was a complete and total mystery.

The instructions sounded simple, and Kanza left the room with the excitement of getting out of his filthy clothes. Like many things, wearing dirty rags ripped up from countless street fights sounds better than it actually is. Even heroes like to be clean. Even not really heroes who are only pretending to be actual heroes.

When Kanza emerged back into the living room sometime later, feeling a good deal better and somewhat amused at his reflection, which included strange wide-legged pants that were very much his style and a t-shirt sporting the logo of some brand long since gone out of business (not so much his style—but he could deal; he was flexible), he was somewhat interested to observe the scene going on.

Everyone was sitting somewhat stiffly in a cluster on the sofa. Romeo was tapping his fingers against one leg and humming a little, looking like he was possibly not quite there, and most probably on some other planet; Irony had the look of a waxed doll: she seemed to have permanently frozen in a pose and didn’t look like she was moving anytime soon. Brain was talking to himself, quite loudly for someone who talks to themselves, telling himself about his latest idea for the theory of how Earth was created. Brain talked to himself a lot, so this in itself was not very unusual: When you’re the smartest person in the room at any given time by several hundred IQ points, you tend to talk to yourself, it being the only intelligent conversation you’re likely to get, unless you happen to be very, very lucky and accidentally stumble upon a convention of scientists.

Lucien was slumped against the back of the sofa, wearing an attentive expression that had somehow gotten bored and run off for a bit and was still gone. His eyes were slightly glazed over.

Orynn sat across from all of them in an overstuffed armchair. She was talking. And talking. And talking some more. Whom she was talking to was quite unclear: possibly she was talking to herself, as Brain was. It was quite likely actually that she was talking to the four people seated across from her. But since none of them except possibly Lucien—and he had just uttered a very faint snore, eyes still open and glassy—seemed to be listening, she probably was talking to herself.

Kanza paused in the doorway, allowing himself a small amount of amusement. His hair, still slightly damp from the bath (which had not been as bad as predicted; there was hot water and it did come out of a tap—just not a normal looking tap, but one rather like it had come out of a century or so ago) was curling. He looked incredibly handsome and like a mythical creature from the fairytale. The hero, naturally, though it was highly unfair really for him to look the part so much, considering he was not the hero. There is something worth noting about people who are not the hero, though, and that is that they tend to become the hero rather fast, in a roundabout and interesting way.

It was just possible—perhaps very possible—that Kanza was well on his way to becoming this unlikely hero in this very unlikely tale.

The TV was on, and it was a wonderful counterpart to Orynn’s talking, in a hideous sort of way.

Orynn liked to talk. She talked to the other occupants of the house when they were home, and she talked to herself almost daily, while she sat alone in her chair and stared at the empty sofa across from her. It was somewhat sad, actually, a lonely scenario that seemed very likely to go on for a long, long while. It had gotten to the point where she could almost imagine inhabitants on the sofa, when there were clearly none. Though there were now, and she was relishing the chance to talk without being considered completely mad.

She was at the moment talking at length about the highly-debated topic of washing pyjamas daily.

“I just don’t see the point, actually,” she argued, her face set in very stern lines that baffled the sofa, which seemed to be sinking slowly under her glare.

Kanza stood in the doorway, very amused and wondering whether he should walk the rest of the way into the room and risk turning Orynn’s attention on himself, or just stay where he was. In the end, the decision was made for him: The swinging door leading into the front area of what had once been the pizza parlour banged open with a sound loud enough to wake the dead.

Lucien jumped about a foot off the sofa, starting wildly. Irony turned her head, shaking a little bit of life into her. Romeo looked up, raising his nonexistent eyebrows.

Only Brain didn’t move, or stop talking to himself. One could hardly blame him; he didn’t expect anyone of much above average intelligence to enter the room.

The woman was so average-looking it was a wonder she didn’t blend straight into the walls. She had medium, nondescript brown-shade hair. She was not tall, but not short either. Not really heavy, but definitely not skinny. Her clothes were the very epitome of plain: a neat blouse of pale blue, a very nondescript shade, and ordinary black work pants. Her eyebrows flew up when she caught sight of the people currently residing in her living room.

“…Lucien,” she gasped weakly, stumbling forward. She was carrying a purse and several bags of groceries, which met the floor almost at once. Lucien was up in a second, at her side, drawing her into a hug.

Irony looked up and met Kanza’s gaze from where he was still lingering at the fringes of the doorway.

“Nice clothes,” she mouthed at him, her face going into its typical sarcasm mask. Kanza gave her a look layered with superiority.

“At least I don’t look like I’ve been dragged backward through the sewer,” he observed, coming up to stand behind the sofa.

“Rathiel, this is Kanza.” Kanza turned at his name to see Lucien nodding toward him. The change in Lucien was odd, almost startling: He’d become in a few short hours not the typical, bewildered accountant father, but a werewolf with years of experience running from his own problems and a history layered with pain and horrors to many to comprehend. He looked stooped with the knowledge that his life was repeating itself; the thought was horrifying, but unstoppable, as so many things in life are. Like watching your own child run in front of a semi trailer and having lost the power to stop her. Fun things like that.

Rathiel—the very ordinary woman—gave Kanza a vaguely suspicious smile. She held out one hand, the nails neatly manicured, and Kanza politely shook it. He heard Irony snorting somewhere behind him, and resisted the urge to sigh wearily.

“Why, Lucien?” Rathiel demanded, dropping Kanza’s hand and losing no time in turning back to the werewolf, her face demanding an answer.

Lucien sighed and ran a hand through his hair. It stood up on end.

“Really, I think the kids need to get to bed; it’s past late,” he sighed.

“Not until I know what you’ve brought me, Lucien,” Rathiel argued. “If you’re going to be here, you at least owe me an explanation. The apartment’s not safe anymore, I take it? I told you you couldn’t run from your problems.” Her mouth tightened, and for a moment she almost looked like Orynn, with a very similar disapproving glare.

Lucien winced. “For the children,” he said in a tone of defeat, and he sounded like he’d repeated it several hundred times already.

Rathiel shrugged. “Children or not, Lucien, they are werewolves. You can’t run and hide from it.”

“We live in Southside, for God’s sake!” Lucien burst out, in a rare fit of temper. It surprised anyone who happened to be watching, and the universe altered its course ever so slightly to stare down at this funny, skinny man with the shadowed past and the ink stains on his nose.

Kanza took the opportunity to back away ever so slowly and carefully, until he could sink inconspicuously (at least, what he hoped was inconspicuously) onto the sofa. Lucien had squared his shoulders in a defensive posture now, and Rathiel’s face bore striking resemblance to a lemon. Any idiot could tell it was turning into a regular argument.

“How can you say I’m running away from my problems?” Lucien fumed. “Don’t you think the fact that we live in Under Midward—nonhuman capital of the world, woman!—just goes to show that I’m not running from anything?”

Rathiel jerked her head slightly, in a funny sort of way. “You refuse to have anything to do with the pack,” she snapped. “Refuse. You wouldn’t even pay attention the last time we tried to sign a petition.”

“As if a petition’s going to do any good! Honestly, Rathiel,”—Lucien shook his head in despair, raising his hands to cover his face—“you have such illusions. We’re one lousy pack of werewolves. We’re just the underdogs.” He paused briefly to laugh at his pun. “You know it’s never going to change. The only thing we can try for is some normalcy for the children. I’m doing the best I can. It was…hard…when Alice left. Surely you realise?” Lucien’s face crumpled slightly in on itself, like an empty muffin wrapper collapsing. Beside Kanza, he caught Irony flinch.

“Why should I care? You knew she would leave.” Rathiel’s voice was harsh now, sharp like dreaded needles.

“The city’s being destroyed,” Lucien said quietly, making an effort to straighten out his face. It looked pathetically like the Man Trying to Move the Mountain. “You can’t tell me you haven’t heard? They’re coming out. They won’t stand for it anymore. Humans are only so powerful.”

“And shouldn’t we be in on it? What are we to them but more of the same?” Rathiel countered, equally softly. Each word was spat out like sour grapefruit. They pinged on the wall opposite and seemed to rebound. “Look at him. He’s human. Human, Lucien. And we’re not. We never will be.”

“We’re not demons, either.” Lucien’s nostrils flared. “Or is that what you think, Rathiel? That we’re not human? Are we not the same?”

Rathiel’s mouth twitched, tugging at the corners. Her lips were pressed in a very thin, white line, and her eyes were hard and angry. She no longer looked plain. She looked furious. Odd how those very plain, ordinary people look the most frightening when overwhelmed with extreme emotions.

Kanza had to suppress a shudder, and was unable to stop himself from moving ever so slightly away from her. It brought him closer to Irony, and he carefully avoided looking at her face, assuming a haughty, distant expression he hoped would warn her off from saying anything. It either worked, or Irony wasn’t paying him any attention at all—the later seemed plausible; her hands were clenched so tightly in her lap they were white—because she didn’t move.

“Fine.” The word was like a hot coal: No-one was going to try to touch it anytime soon or risk jumping around yelping and cradling their hand.

“I win.” Lucien spoke so softly the words were almost invisible, and he was wearing a faintly triumphant look that was somehow teasing at the same time. Rathiel gave him a disgruntled look, but she no longer looked like an angry cat about to tear the house—or possibly the world—apart. A smile tugged at her lips slightly.

“Always the best at arguments, Luce,” she sighed. Lucien leaned back against the kitchen counter, narrowly avoiding smashing his head into an open cabinet door.

“Of course,” he agreed amicably, giving a winning smile. It was a shocking other side to Lucien. This was not Mr Phillips the Accountant, it was not Irony and Brain’s dad, and it was not Lucien the Werewolf, either. This was Lucien Phillips, whoever he’d once been. Brave, honest, kind, insomuch as one single person can hold. He was obviously also mildly jealous, slightly whiney, and at times spiteful. No one’s perfect.

“I assume you can find the spare bedroom?” Rathiel directed her next question at Irony, who looked like she was restraining words with some difficulty. Not so good words. Maybe bad words.

“Of course.”

Orynn was still talking. It was somewhat of a very sad, sad dilemma.

Irony got up stiffly, and marched past Kanza without looking, turning down the hallway. There was a cold silence after she left. It felt very lonely. Finally, Romeo stood up, flashing everyone a big grin. Orynn seemed to have fallen asleep while talking; her head was lolling gently against the back of the chair. She looked peaceful, almost relaxed.

“Right, then,” Romeo said, with every ounce of cheerfulness he could muster, and it looked like it took a lot of effort. “Right then. See you guys in the morning.” He waved, and then rattled and clanked his way past Lucien and Rathiel, going out the swinging door. There were a few distance crashes, the silvery sound of a bell, and a hastily stifled, “darn!”

Kanza stretched stiffly. “Romeo doesn’t sleep?” He turned to Brain with a wry smile. Brain shrugged, looking distant.

“I don’t quite know,” he admitted, waving one hand rather vaguely.

“At any rate, we should be going to bed. Never know when a demon’s going to come roaring into your house.” He grinned almost as wide as Romeo, and it was a truly frightening thing. You almost forgot that Brain was a werewolf, he did the vague geeky thing so well.

“I’ll make pancakes tomorrow,” Lucien called, winking in the direction of the sofa. Kanza was bewildered and tried not to show it. He nodded toward the man, lounging against the counter in his ratty jeans and t-shirt. Rathiel had started to empty her grocery bags, stacking peanut butter, bread, marshmallows, tinned milk, and other necessities in the cabinets. She walked very pointedly around Lucien, who just as pointedly didn’t make any effort to move.

Brain unfolded his lanky frame from the sofa with a yawn, and Kanza stood up gracefully, stretching a little. Brain gave him a bewildered look that might have been resentful had it been anyone other than Brain; certainly Irony would have followed it up with a sarcastic comment and sigh.

Kanza paid no attention whatsoever, padding silently like a cat around the sofa and past the little kitchen.

The bedroom looked awfully welcoming, despite the fact that it were completely bereft of beds. Irony was sitting in one corner, facing the wall. Her hair was loose, spreading out in a display of black and electric blue across her back. She didn’t move when Kanza and Brain entered the room, or in any way acknowledge their presence.

“…Room.”

“Hmm?” Brain looked confused, glancing sideways at Kanza, who was blinking furiously; the idea of bedrooms had gotten to his brain, and it was deciding that two a.m. was time to shut down completely.

“My room.” The words were a growl forced out from between Irony’s teeth. She twisted around to glower at the two of them. “Get. Out. Yours. On. Left.”

“Oh.” Brain looked startled.

“Quite, to be sure,” Kanza agreed, surreptitiously taking a couple quick steps backward, toward the door. Irony’s blue eyes spit fire at him, and he reached out nervously without looking behind him, trying to feel for the doorframe.

He bolted as soon as the exit seemed achievable.

The other room had a sofa in one corner. Another one of those very scary Sagging Sofas. It horrified Kanza in an abstract sort of way. They all seemed to belong to the same family. The same family of very Failing Furniture.

Fortunately, the room also had a mattress. A rather large one. It looked big enough for two people.

“Funny how they always make those beds so large,” Brain said from behind Kanza. He sounded a little puzzled.

“I always sleep on sofas,” Kanza said, very, very firmly. There was a very small sliver of silence while Kanza stared determinedly at the very sad looking sofa across the room.

“That’s Romeo you’re thinking of,” Brain said after a long moment, in a very low, awkward tone. He looked up at the ceiling, hummed a bit, and scratched his nose.

Kanza studied his boots. “Oh. Right.”

It was going to be a long night.

[Kathleen]

SPOILER: Click to show

There were demons. Lots of them. Grinning evilly and brandishing fire in their hands. And they all had the same staring eyes. Big, black eyes. Her eyes.

Kanza was having a difficult time. He was having an argument with his mind, which had decided it had enough. Especially of those eyes. It was now threatening to jump off the cliff. It was intense. Full of shrieking. And desperate pleas.

It’s no good, I’ve had it! Enough! Absolutely enough! We’re in a werewolf’s house. No, werewolves. Plural!

Relax. It’s not that bad… I mean, look…

No, I’ve had it! We’re going!

No, get away from the edge…that’s dangerous—no, I forbid it!

There was a struggle. Kanza emerged victorious, grinning and trying to sit up. He was a terrifying sight, grinning like a madman, a fistful of pillow in each hand, and no one could blame Brain for looking equally parts startled and frightened.

“I won,” Kanza announced, still wearing his maniacal smile. Brain backed away ever so slightly, until he was against the opposite wall.

“Erm, yes, of course,” he hedged.

Kanza blinked, and turned his head a little. There was a good deal of bright sunshine flooding the room, which had a navy blue carpet covered in a thick layer of dust, and not much else. Birds were chirping outside the window.

“Ahem.” Kanza cleared his throat, very slowly lowering his hands. Feathers blew up in a cloud, settling in his dark hair and making him look like a mad chicken murderer. He looked down at the bed. There was an awkward silence.

Brain coughed. He was not good at these things. He was just the Brother. He wasn’t supposed to have to do anything important.

“Er, there’s pancakes,” he ventured, and then made his escape very quickly, darting out the door.

Kanza sat on the sofa and considered the fact that people ran away from him. It was not news to him, but he was getting different feelings about it lately. Strange. It’d never bothered him before. It hurt now. A little. Like some tiny bit had died inside him.

Putting a damper on the angsty, cliché stuff, Kanza went to go do something his extremely feathery state.

Afterwards, he joined the mess in the kitchen, because pancakes sounded like a good idea. Especially when faced with impending doom and demons that could spring in at any moment. Not that it seemed the type of day for demons to spring in; those kind of things never happen on sunny days.

Kanza was having faint thoughts about his mom. He’d tried to banish them with very logical reasoning. She was better off without him. she was safer. He was dangerous.

It occurred to him that he was getting dangerously into the realm of clichés here; since when had he become dangerous?

Since he’d met Irony, of course, he admitted morosely to himself, taking a stand around the counter. There was no table; everyone had a plate and a fork and were filling the kitchen up arguing and getting syrup on everyone else. Kanza felt separated somehow; as thought there were an invisible barrier between them and him. He stared, glassy-eyed, ahead, lost in his own personal world of misery, which was rapidly threatening to drown him, as it tried to do often if he was alone too long. Alone was not good for Kanza these days.

“Pancake?” Irony appeared by Kanza’s side, startling him. She was wearing a leather motorcycle jacket, jeans, and an orange shirt claiming Jonathan Coulton Pwned. Whatever that meant. She looked disgruntled, and was holding up a pancake on a skewer. Pointing it at him, actually. It looked menacing, like some kind of pancake mace.

Kanza backed away automatically, his hands coming halfway up in a gesture of surrender before he fought them down again.

“Er…”

“The cake’s a lie,” Irony added. “Or Romeo says that, anyway. I don’t know if it’s true or not. I mean, have you ever had cake that was a lie?”

“Er…” Kanza wasn’t managing very many coherent sentences. Irony had him pinned against the back wall by the door into the pizza parlour now; she was brandishing the pancake on a skewer wildly.

“‘Just keep trying, till you run out of cake’,” Irony suggested. Kanza looked nonplussed.

“Excuse me?”

“Pain.” Irony glared at him, and Kanza was very sure he would have been skewered by a pancake right then, except at that moment, he was saved—or condemned, it really depends on your point of view—by the door beside him slamming open. Kanza ducked to avoid being brained by a large rectangle of wood, and thus was probably in the best position when Romeo staggered backwards into the kitchen, followed by three very scary looking men. That was the best way to describe them, anyway, though ‘demons’ was probably more accurate.

Lucien froze, turned halfway from the stove. He had a spatula in one hand and an oven mitt on the other. He didn’t look equipped to fight a battle against demons very well.

Orynn was talking to her plate of pancakes, not exactly the most helpful person in the world; Rathiel looked up, stunned.

Brain looked mildly surprised.

There was one of those very brief pauses where everyone, including the attacking demons, are trying to take in the situation. And this was a very interesting one. The head demon looked like something out of Steven King’s nightmares. And to scare Steven King, you’d imagine it had to be pretty scary. The other two were not quite as scary—in fact, one of them was bubblegum pink, and was using a polka dotted umbrella as a weapon. Still.

They were all frozen in very comical poses of shock.

“Pancakes, anyone?” Lucien asked rather uncertainly, looking hopefully unhopeful in the way of one who knows they’re not going to be taken up on their offer.

“No thanks,” the head demon said politely. “Not to be rude or anything, but we’ve got orders to kill. And, you know, it wouldn’t really fit into the schedule. Boss’s a bit tight these days.” The silence continued for one more brief moment.

“Ah, well, can’t blame one for trying,” Lucien sighed, and all hell broke loose.

Kanza ducked as Irony turned in very close proximity to him and launched her pancake off its skewer, straight into the polka dot umbrella-holding demon’s face. It looked extremely surprised, and croaked out a, “Hey!” in a very deep and manly voice. One could almost see why it’d joined the Dark Side.

It looked like Brain was trying. Certainly he was waving his arms around in the mimicry of someone try very hard to be helpful. He was mainly getting in everyone else’s way, but he did seem to be getting in a few demons’ way too, and that helped. Or it was supposed to, anyway. And it looked like it did; once or twice the head demon (the very nightmarish one) stopped abruptly, confronted with an extraneous and very long limb blocking its way.

Rathiel looked like she knew what to do. Looked being the keyword here; actually she was waving a dinner plate around in a vaguely useful way and her ears had gone pointed and furry.

Orynn had opted for the full-out wolf form, and she was now howling at the top of her lungs. Except it sounded more like a vaguely loud whimpering. You really, really had to feel sorry for her. Or that mangy, half starved dog cowering in the corner, anyway. It deserved sympathy.

Lucien was beating off two demons at once; one got the full force of his spatula, and the other the oven mitt. It was difficult to tell which one was working better against the razor teeth and bone-cutting claws. Not to mention the iron plates of the demon on the left (that was the one that got the full force of the oven mitt, and it looked extremely confused; fighting off oven mitts wasn’t in the job description).

Kanza had his secret knife out and was trying to do as much damage from behind the door as he could. It was difficult, Irony being right beside him, looking a little startled now that her pancake was gone. Fortunately the demon was clawing at a whole lot of pancake on its face, and Kanza took the opportunity to fling himself headfirst at it. It was perhaps not the best idea in the world.

He was immediately enveloped in a lot of claws, scales, and miscellaneous sharp parts. The demon appeared to have only the vaguest notion there was something now clinging to its front, and it turned halfway, brushing against the door. Well, it brushed, anyway. Kanza slammed into it sideways and had to cling for dear life to the demon’s arm as his head smashed into the wood and stars swirled around his vision in a darkening cloud.

His shoulder was on fire; it felt dislocated now, and he scrabbled wildly. His knife was in his teeth, somehow, which was not actually, contrary to what most movies seemed to think, the optimum place to keep such a sharp, shiny object. He was going to lose his tongue if anything unplanned happened. Such as…

Ow. Ow. The demon staggered back, and Kanza slid a little down its chest, dropping his grip with one arm and stabbing his knife in a wild and completely useless arc.

“Idiot, what are you using?”

Irony grabbed Kanza as he fell off the demon, which had decided to straighten up, finally pancake free. The movement knocked loose Kanza’s wavering grip, and his fingers slid. He kicked a little, but he was already hitting the floor, with a faint cry of pain as Irony grabbed his arm. His shoulder was definitely dislocated.

The ceiling looked a little fuzzy. He stared up at it from it from where he was lying on his back, his vision spinning in dizzy circles.

Someone screamed. There was the sound of fire crackling, the twang of a spatula breaking, and then a very cold, very still silence.

Kanza blinked up at the ceiling, trying to figure out whether he was upside down or not. The faint smell of burning pancakes wafted over to him.

Irony slowly straightened up in that cold, cold silence. Kanza noticed, in a vague way, that through the kitchen window it had gone very grey and gloomy outside, like a huge dustpan had come along and swept up the sun, packing it off to replace it with rolls of water vapour.

“That’s enough.” The voice was very soft, but very commanding. It was the kind of voice that sent chills down your spine.

And someone came into Kanza’s rather limited line of vision. Someone who was upside down. Well, not really. Unless he was. He honestly couldn’t figure it out. But whatever it happened to be, Kanza recognised the person. Very well.

He coughed, twitching a little on the floor. It felt like his head had been smashed open and then carefully Scotch-taped back together.

“Fancy seeing you again,” he managed, trying unsuccessfully for a smile. Aloise raised one eyebrow.



Awesome Interlude: Number Two

Jhonny Heralds was beginning to think that Midward was no longer the safest place in the world, even for a vampire.

It hadn’t been so bad at first. Actually, it’d been great for three years. It was just recently that things were so good anymore.

Not since he’d been burgled, mugged, and blackmailed all in the course of three weeks. It just wasn’t the same anymore. Jhonny was a little sad. He was thinking about leaving. Packing up again and wandering off somewhere. Maybe he’d even try to look for more vampires this time. Maybe he’d stop trying to be cheerful and get regular jobs, and just face reality.

Jhonny was a naturally cheerful, creative person—vampire. He’d spelled his name wrong when he was five (a while before he turned vampire) and decided he liked it that way. That should tell you a lot about Jhonny.

That was a while ago, though. Jhonny had lost count of the amount of people he’d killed. It didn’t really seem necessary to remember anymore. In fact, it seemed somewhat extraneous knowledge, though, being a vampire, he could have remembered had he chosen to. He didn’t. It was depressing enough, sitting on the floor in his vandalised apartment, staring at the empty space where the TV used to be, getting a little chilly from the cold wind that blew through the broken window.

Jhonny prided himself on being so cheerful, upbeat, and clever at pretending he’d been a famous actor more than once. Actually, that might have been someone else. Probably Lem Clemmons. Jhonny’d liked Lem. He was a funny chap, just perfect for a movie star. It was like acting twice: Once to pretend to be Lem, and then to pretend to be whoever Lem was being. It was confusing and utterly hilarious, and Jhonny enjoyed it to a huge extent.

But he was not feeling so cheerful, so clever and interesting, lately. He’d noticed it, of course. He was a vampire; he knew it was coming. So he’d ignored it. He’d done great, smiling extra wide and frightening off a lot of parents with children.

It had been sunny this morning, when Jhonny had left to go buy a donut and a newspaper at the newsstand.

It had been cold and dark, threatening to rain, when he returned to find the windows of his apartment smashed, and everything remotely valuable gone.

Jhonny sighed, and let his head drop into his hands. He was seriously beginning to get tired of this.

There was a knock on the door then, very suddenly. Jhonny looked up, opening one eye. He stiffened, sniffing the air. The door of the apartment opened.

“Hey,” Jhonny began, standing up and putting on his very best welcoming smile. He didn’t get much farther.
***

There were a lot of murders that day. Those very quiet kind of murders that most people ignore simply because the murdered people aren’t very important. Or aren’t thought to be very important, anyway. It’s strange how people measure importance. The hero fated to save the universe can be quietly strangled in an alley, and no one minds very much; but kill the not very useful, easily-replaceable king with a thousand heirs waiting in line, ready to take over, and it’s a national day of mourning. Odd how these things happen.


Chapter Seven

“I really don’t understand how you people can be so stupid,” Aloise said, and she sounded amused and astounded in a vague sort of way.

Kanza was beginning to feel tired. Very, very tired. Impossibly tired. A huge weight seemed to settle itself very firmly on his chest, and it held him on his back on the floor, and he was too tired to get up, or make any move at all. He was absolutely perfectly content to sit there and listen to Aloise yak as long as she wanted to. About his death, or someone else’s, or plans for world domination, or whatever. Just so long as he wasn’t required to get up, or move at all. He had a feeling if he tried, his head would split open like a watermelon. And no one would be very pleased.

Someone coughed, and Aloise’s head jerked around. Kanza tried to look without actually turning his head, and managed to catch a glimpse of Romeo, who was pinned down by a rather beautiful looking demon with red hair (really red hair—Christmas red; none of that orange stuff) and a hawk nose. A real hawk nose. A hawk’s nose. Otherwise known as a beak.

Romeo coughed a second time, meaningfully. There was a little bit of smoke leaking out from under his button-down shirt.

“Pyromancer.” Aloise looked a little surprised. She stepped around Kanza, approaching the demon-and-Romeo pair.

“That’s me, my lovely lady,” Romeo said gallantly, making a very tight sort of bow, as well as he could while being held in the grip of a very dangerous demon. The demon snorted. “You’re very lovely, as well,” Romeo added to it, in a comforting tone. “Charmingly pretty, actually. I should think, what about me and you sometime—”

“Silence, pyromancer,” Aloise interrupted in a very arrogant manner. Kanza was watching her in interest from where he was lying in a rather strange position on the floor, taking mental notes. She obviously knew how to do the commanding thing. Very well. He would have been in awe if he hadn’t been very quietly just trying to keep breathing. Things hurt. A lot.

Romeo sighed in regret.

“Later, sweet one,” he told the demon placidly, flashing a winning sort of smile. The demon holding Romeo looked very, very surprised. “Don’t worry, I won’t forget. You and me and a rose, eh?” He winked.

“Romeo,” Irony spluttered, her indignation enough to get past her freezing terror. “Romeo, you’re married.”

Romeo blinked, and this was enough to halt even Aloise, who looked for one minute confused. It was an odd look for a demon.

“Ellen doesn’t mind; she’s used to it,” Romeo said smoothly, with a very charming smile around at the room in general. “She wholeheartedly supports all of my love interests.”

More of that disbelieving silence.

“I thought you were gay,” Kanza choked out with some difficulty. It was hard to talk lying flat on his back on the floor, his ribs feeling freshly battered.

“As the mood strikes me, dear fellow,” Romeo answered with a knowing smile. “One can’t afford to be picky in life—there’s so many hot guys, and girls. And as for you, my lovely, lovely demon princess”—Romeo fixed his dashing smile back on Aloise—“will you marry me?”

Someone coughed, very loudly. It was unclear who—it may in fact have been the impartial observer. Who had turned just a little partial. It happens.

Still other people choked a little. Lucien looked mildly surprised, blinking out from behind the crushing weight of the head demon, who appeared to be sitting on him. Orynn, whom no one actually paid any attention to, still cowering in the corner, muttered something that sounded a lot like, “Dear God, the boy is hopeless.”

Aloise looked floored. Then she drew herself up.

“I see you haven’t changed, pyromancer,” she said softly. She paced one step closer, until she was close enough to reach out and touch Romeo. He was still smiling with enough vigour to launch an airplane, though it was beginning to look just a little strained.

“Still just as flirty and ridiculously arrogant as ever, aren’t you? Even with danger. Mmm.” She smiled, a chilly little smile, down at Romeo, who blinked very fast. He looked uncomfortable.

Aloise turned abruptly, and her long robe swished in time with her golden hair, that fell like a thick sheet of…well, hair, down her back.

She was now staring down at Kanza, who looked back up at her, unable to tear his gaze away. Those penetrating eyes that had filled his dreams watched him, so full of un-mercy and promises of torture. It was fascinating, the fact that he was so terrified, and yet he was sure that wasn’t the reason for his suddenly racing heart. He…he…he…he thought he was in love. A very terrified, suicidal kind of love, but love nonetheless. It was very irking, in a way, to suddenly find this out.

He’d always enjoyed the looks from the girls; admiring and quietly coveting. But this, this was different. This was horrifying. Very definitely. What made it all the more horrifying was that Romeo was right across from him, undoubtedly watching.

He couldn’t form a coherent sentence. All that came out was a slight whoosh of air, his last, he thought, because he couldn’t quite find the right parts to entice more oxygen into his bruised lungs.

“Angel’s son,” Aloise said very quietly, with a trace of bitterness in her tone, gazing down at him from her lofty position of standing height.

“What?” Irony asked the question, but Aloise ignored her, speaking directly to Kanza, who’d given up on trying forms of communication. He was just choosing to lie there still, peacefully examining the demon princess.

“Angel’s son. I cannot believe your mother managed to hide you for so long. Surely she knew my father would never give up?”

“I…really…don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kanza panted.

Aloise’s expression turned mocking. “You’re trying to tell me your mother never told you about your father? About your heritage?”

“Nope, don’t think so,” Kanza answered breezily. Well, it was more like breathily, seeing as how he was a bit short on the air supply currently.

He decided firmly that he was tired of lying on his back. It was the inferiority thing: you were inferior if you were lying down on your back, being stood over. Even if a thousand demons jumped on him and ripped him to pieces, he was sitting up.

He managed this gracefully, despite the protests of his unhealed ribs, propping himself up against the door. No one made any move to jump at him, and he leaped back, closing his eyes briefly. He could feel Irony standing next to him. She didn’t move.

When Kanza opened his eyes again, he squinted quickly. Aloise was still staring down at him, though not so far down anymore, and she wasn’t upside down now, either. It pleased him.

“You have a curse on you, angel’s son,” Aloise said tightly. Her lips were pressed tighter now.

“Yeah, actually, I think I’ve noticed that,” Kanza agreed casually. He gave Aloise a winning smile. It was so much easier to do with Aloise than Irony; Irony kind of made it fall flat on its face. On Aloise, it worked nicely. “You know, demons chasing me everywhere? I’d say that’s pretty much a curse. My life hasn’t been easy, that’s for darn sure.”

Aloise’s eyes tightened, and her nostrils flared out.

“Do you find it odd, angel boy, that you and I are here now, centuries after our parents fought? A repeat of history, isn’t it?”

“I would agree, except I actually think I didn’t know anything about this,” Kanza returned lightly.

He felt a slight breeze ruffle his hair. This was nice; he liked it a lot. This was cool, the right situation to be in. Calmly discussing curses and heritage with a demon princess surrounded by a lot of other demons, werewolves, and one extremely unfaithful and undecided pyromancer.
“Let me tell you a story, then,” Aloise suggested mockingly. She raised one eyebrow.

“I have all the time in the world,” Kanza agreed cheerily. This was technically true. Sort of. Romeo made a strangled sort of noise.

“If you let everyone get comfortable,” Kanza added, feeling self righteous and more than a little just. “You know, make your cronies let go of my friends.”

It felt odd to say the word ‘friends’. Kanza, like a lot of people, didn’t really have ‘friends’. This was a very strange situation, however, and he found much to his surprise, he actually sort of did have friends.

Aloise’s mouth twitched, and it wasn’t in a humourous way, but she turned her head a little, jerking it toward her head demon.

“Let them go.”

“But, but, we’ve got orders from the boss,” the demon began, in a whining sort of way, removing one hand from its deathgrip around Lucien’s arm to gesture pathetically.

“I said, let them go.” Aloise’s tone was very quiet, and very, very deadly. “Unless you would like to take it up with the boss…?” she trailed off suggestively, but in a way that made you entirely sure she was suggesting a lot of painful things should you decide to go against her wishes.

The demon slowly released Lucien, stood up, coughed a little, rubbed his head. Or what appeared to be his head. It looked more like a bowling ball with multicoloured spikes all over it.

Lucien sat up very slowly, wrapping an arm around his side and looking tired. He sighed.

“So, demons and angels is it, now?” he asked.

“Yep, demons,” Romeo coughed, as he, too, was released by a demon. The hawk-nosed demon was looking at him speculatively however, as Romeo sank to the floor. Romeo didn’t appear to notice the look he was receiving; his face was very pale, and he was breathing harder than usual. There was a smear of something dark at the corner of his mouth.

“Always demons,” Rathiel added sarcastically, crawling out from under the table and making an effort to haul herself up. Her hair was down in a tangled mess around her shoulders, and her clothes looked like they’d sustained a few rips. She was also wearing war paint. It was extremely odd, considering, and one might seriously begin to wonder how she’d gotten a hold of it. But Rathiel was strange. There was no denying that. Almost as strange as Orynn. Werewolves.

Aloise turned back to Kanza.

“Better?” she asked icily. Kanza nodded wearily. He was beginning to feel like it hadn’t been worth it at all to get up this morning. He might have been better off staying on that stupid sofa in the feathers, looking like a fowl murderer. Fowl murderer. Foul murderer. Haha. He smiled to himself, pleased; he’d made a pun.

“Interesting, now, isn’t it? How we’re both here now. The city burns,” Aloise mused. Kanza focused on her, eyes narrowing.

“You’ve noticed, haven’t you? Of course you have, angel’s son.” She laughed softly. “The city burns because of you. You thought you were it’s protector, isn’t that right?”

Kanza risked a very tiny glance at Lucien. The werewolf’s eyes were closed; he was fully human once more, no sign of even the tiniest bit of fur. And he looked tired. Anciently weary.

“I hate to break it to you, but Midward’s been overrun by demons long before you arrived, princess,” Kanza said flippantly, raising one eyebrow.

Romeo chuckled weakly from where he was sitting on the floor, resting his head against the side of the sofa. His eyes were closed, and he looked spent. There wasn’t even a hint of fire around him anymore. It was disconcerting; a pyromancer without fire. It was like…like a fish without water. Unbelievable.

“I think we all know it’s a demon city.” Aloise smiled thinly. “It’s always been. A city of demons, werewolves, vampires, zombies, gargoyles, trolls…and humans.”

“Yes, and humans,” Kanza agreed, when the silence stretched on just a little too long for his liking, and no one seemed inclined to break it.

“And what does this have to do with anything?” Lucien asked after a brief pause. He gestured around a bit, hauling himself up by the sink, and very gingerly setting his weight on his feet. He swayed quite a lot, bearing remarkable resemblance to a very thin tree in a very large tornado.

“I was looking for you,” Aloise said conversationally to Kanza. She appeared to be conveniently pretending no one else in the room existed. It was just her and Kanza, staring at each other in the back room of a pizza parlour turned house that was bigger on the inside. It reminded him of a book he’d read once. He wondered if this was supposed to be what real romance was like. Obviously whatever cheesy love novels he’d spied in backpacks at school were not the Real Thing. They didn’t know anything: real love involved a lot of trying not to get killed by enraged and very dashing demon princesses you just happened to be in love with.

“This city is really very pathetic,” Aloise continued. “My father says as demon lord, he should’ve gotten rid of it a long time ago.”

She sounded awfully prissy saying ‘My father’, in that extremely irritating way that people who say ‘My father’ do.

“My mom says…my mom says tomatoes are good for you,” Kanza interjected wildly.

Everyone looked at him.

“Well, she does,” he argued.

“They make ketchup, too. I like ketchup,” Romeo put in without opening his eyes.

“With French fries,” Lucien sighed.

Kanza glanced up at Irony. Her eyes looked glassy.

“Where’s your father now, then?” Kanza asked Aloise, returning his attention to her. Lucien and Romeo were discussing the merits of ketchup, and exactly how many things it could be put on.

Romeo was under the opinion it was all-purpose, and could make everything from friend potatoes to wood shavings edible. Lucien disagreed, citing the only things that deserved ketchup as fries and Kiwi-style scrambled eggs. Rathiel made some indistinct gasping noises, and muttered something about macaroni and cheese.

Orynn put her rasping word in, never one to be quiet.

“What is ketchup?”

“My father,” Aloise said quietly to Kanza, “is dead.” Her mouth tightened in a funny line, and her dark eyes seemed to go wider, bigger, like an abyss waiting to swallow some unsuspecting pigeon whole.

“As is mine.” Kanza wasn’t really sure how he knew this; he thought it would probably fall under the classification of ‘things you always knew you knew deep down in yours soul’.

Actually, it was more just that the whole thing made sense now. There was no other option. Stories only went one way. They didn’t really work if they got twisted around any other way; everyone got disgruntled. Of course, that wasn’t to say that you couldn’t have a lot of unexpected and strange twists along while going this way.

Aloise’s deep eyes flickered briefly.

“As you say, angel’s son,” she spat. “They died fighting each other.”

“And that’s what this is all about, isn’t it?” Kanza asked, his heart sinking. He was fairly sure he knew the answer at this point, and it was more than a little disappointing. Was this seriously what the whole thing was about? Was this why’d he’d always been so good at hunting demons? Just because his dad was some nutty angel who died killing some nutty demon before Kanza was born? It didn’t seem quite fair, somehow, that he got stuck with that kind of story, this kind of ending.

He had it all figured out. Aloise had finally tracked him down, and was after revenge.

It seemed almost silly when Aloise opened her mouth and said,

“It took me years to find you, angel son. Years, and years of searching. You’re lucky I didn’t raze the city to the ground.” She glared at Kanza. “Because of you, I never had a father.” Yep. Exactly right. Perfect. Who needs an original reason when you can just insert ‘revenge’ in that nice little blank line beside ‘motive for burning several buildings to the ground and cold-bloodedly murdering a lot of innocent people’?

“Wasn’t that… wasn’t that a little extreme?” Kanza blinked hesitantly. “I mean, chasing everyone around the city and all… you know, I didn’t even know you existed until, oh, about a week ago.”

There was a special kind of silence. A two person silence. A big, deep, thoughtful silence. A silence where reasons are thought up and motives wondered at and revenge planned. Usually, anyway.

“I’ve never tried Kiwi-style scrambled eggs,” said Romeo into the silence, “so I wouldn’t be able to tell you.”

“You wouldn’t like them,” Irony sighed, for once keeping to a bare minimum of words with no detectable hint of sarcasm. It was, of course, possible there was some hidden, but doubtful, seeing as how Irony was leaning against the wall looking like she was holding herself up only with sheer effort of will, and some help from the wall.

“Revenge is never extreme, angel’s son,” Aloise said, and her voice was very soft, and incredibly deadly, like a snake waiting to strike. A cobra abandoning her magazine, dropping her hot chocolate with marshmallows, rearing up…

“Demons don’t need a reason,” Kanza murmured tiredly, and he slumped back against the wall. He was tired, so very tired, of all this mess. The running and the screaming and the ketchup discussions, too.

He was tired of trying to make friends and tired of being ridiculed, and tired of having to live in this terrible story. He didn’t like it much at all anymore.

A haunting piano melody filled Kanza’s dim senses, singing him to sleep. He recognised it; Tchaikovsky’s 5th Symphony. It was a simply amazing piece, and it had references to suit every occasion…

A guttural snarl cut through the haziness of Kanza’s sleep deprived stupor. His eyes snapped open, and he struggled upright, trying to assess the situation in a calm and professional manner and decide who was attempting to kill who.

Unfortunately, before he could get very far on this assessment, something crashed into him very heavily. His head snapped back and met with wood for the second—or possibly third, he couldn’t remember anymore, not surprisingly—time that day. Kanza saw stars and felt his brain shaking loose.

Irony was in full wolf-form, and she launched herself at Aloise with a sudden howl of rage. Kanza watched in vague surprise through a haze of bright shiny lights. He’d never seen Irony act the werewolf part before.

“Heey,” Romeo said weakly. He was trying, with minimal success, to haul himself up off the floor. “Ow,” he said in surprise, his lack of eyebrows jumping up his forehead. He leaned forward a little, and collapsed into a heap on the carpeting. It was a little frightening, in a way, especially when a trickle of smoke burned a hole in the carpeting by his side.

Kanza didn’t have as much time to worry about Romeo as he would have liked, because Irony sounded like she was having some trouble.

It might have been the fact that Aloise had suddenly sprouted a lot of extra sharp spiny bits that were now sticking out in random places. She and Irony were a tumbling mess of silver and blond and funny blue robes, swirling on the floor. There was a lot of snapping and growling going on, too.

Kanza wasn’t sure he could move any bit of his body at all, but he was darned if he wasn’t going to try. Most heroes are. Or sort of heroes, anyway. He wasn’t really sure what he was anymore. He was the villain, from Aloise’s point of view, anyway.

Not entirely sure if this was the right thing to do, but sensing in a very vague and disjointed way that Irony needed help and he had to do something, Kanza threw himself into the midst of the tangle that was Irony and Aloise.

It didn’t work as well as he’d hoped. He couldn’t accurately throw himself—it ended up more as stumbled and falling headfirst onto Irony—and Lucien had apparently had much the same idea, at much the same time.

Lucien was in some kind of messy half-werewolf form, and he’d lost his shirt along the way. It looked to be those little bits of white confetti sprinkled across the room.

He was snarling, obviously intent on wrestling his daughter away from the crazed demon princess, and he shoved Kanza out of the way rather roughly. Kanza tried to duck and roll, but someone above wasn’t having any of that, and instead he slammed into the centre island, only very narrowly managing to keep his head on.

He lay there, sideways against the counter, and tried not to think of moving. The last time it hadn’t been such a great idea, apparently.

Aloise let out a shriek of rage that seemed to fill the whole room, ballooning like a soap bubble full of air, and then popping with a sharpness that sent the rest of the demons (looking rather worthless now) scrambling with howls of pain as they clutched nonexistent ears.

Aloise was on her feet now, swaying dangerously. She was a terrifying picture in the midst of the kitchen. She seemed to burn with some indescribable fury. It was really all very scary.

Irony was lying at her feet, in that really terrible cliché picture of the dying wolf. Lucien was alternating between snarling up at Aloise, and snarling down at his daughter, who was staggering to her human feet, encumbered by wolf paws and a rather large, furry head.

“Troll,” Romeo muttered into the carpet. Kanza heard, and forced his aching and bruised body to turn just a little, so that he was facing the pyromancer. Romeo was lifting his head with some difficulty, getting onto his hands and knees. He jerked his chin upwards, his eyes widening as Kanza stared dumbly.

“TROLL!”

Something caught Kanza directly in the back, and he crumpled once more, rolled a little, and jacknifed upright, knife in hand, to face the towering troll in front of him.

It was a small knife. A very small knife. It was approximately the size of a toothpick, though a little wider and considerably stronger. It was the rat’s knife. Hence the smallness. But the point was, Kanza had a knife. And the troll didn’t.

Not that that would actually matter very much; the troll had much, much better things than a knife, and it was preparing to use them.

“Why me?” Kanza asked no one in particular. He backed up, very, very slowly. He couldn’t tell what the rest of the people—beings—in the room were currently doing. He was focusing all his attention on Death in the form of a seven foot six troll amply equipped with tusks among other life-threatening objects.

“Why anyone?” someone answered. Kanza didn’t have any glances to spare Irony, but he could see her out of the corner of his eye, and she was staggering to her feet, not looking very good.

“You know, I really think we’re going to die now,” she said conversationally.

“Um, see you in heaven?” Kanza was still backing up ever so slowly, concentrating on his plan of action. Which was nonexistent at the moment. He supposed he could be gracious, at this moment, which looked very likely to be both of their last; even if Irony was a darned being, she was rather… well, rather nice. He almost wanted to think that if she died, she could go to heaven.

“Oh, no. Werewolves don’t believe in heaven,” Irony disagreed. The troll was smiling in triumphant glee. Or it might have just been opening its mouth, preparing to swallow them both whole. “We think we’re already dead. When we get killed, we’re alive again.” She grinned very widely in a manic sort of way.

“Wha…?”

Kanza, busy backing up, hit the opposite wall, and tripped over the TV stand, tangling his feet up in a lot of wires. He went down hard, and looked up. Straight into the very large face of the troll. This is the end, he thought, horrified, and unable to move, staring up into that that extremely hairy face.

The troll staggered just a little, as something small and furry (well, comparatively small, anyway) threw itself at the troll’s leg.

The troll went down amazingly fast under two werewolves who hadn’t been much farther than the street over in about twenty years.

Orynn and Rathiel had obviously had practise, in some other lifetime, and even with the wolf that was Orynn keeping up a continous stream of whines and howls, muffled around the bits of troll she had clamped between her teeth, it was shocking how little Kanza had to do.

He didn’t have to do anything, in fact, except finally give in to the TV’s wires, and fall in a heap in the corner between the television stand and the sofa.

Kanza sat there for a minute, a little bewildered. It was a nice sort of space, cozy in a way. Once you were tucked inside it, you felt isolated somehow from the rest of the world. It was comfortable. Kanza thought of having a nice little nap and waking up when the sounds of snarls and screams were over.

His plans were ruined, as usual, when the window above the sofa he was currently sitting next to shattered with an earsplitting bang.

It rained broken glass, and Kanza ducked, shielding his face.

“MURDERER!”

Something leaped through the window, out from the soggy grey day where it was drizzling a little and generally proving that sunny days can turn gloomy really very fast in Midward.

The something—a rather large kind of something—was just a blur streaking by Kanza, who was brushing broken glass off of himself and trying to get up.

“Murderer!” another voice chimed, a little quieter and more in the register suitable for bats, vampires, and other batty creatures, as a second something flew through the smashed window. This was a much smaller something. A much furrier, browner something with a little blue.

The vampire straightened up. He looked tall and thin and like he’d been dead and revived at least three times. Actually, it was only two, but same difference, really.

He was tall and thin in the typical vampiric way, with a lot of dark blonde hair and eyes ringed with deep shadows. He was dressed in a dapper brown coat and pants ensemble, and his shoes were very shiny. He looked like he needed a good nap.

“I was already murdered once,” Jhonny Heralds said reproachfully, addressing the room at large. The rat bounced off the sofa, scrabbled up his pant leg, and came to rest on his shoulder. It blinked a couple of times, and adjusted its navy blue mariner’s jacket.

“’E was murdered once already, mates,” the rat confirmed cheerily, demonstrating its boundless ability to state the obvious.

Everyone paused in what they’d been doing. Everyone looked at the rat and the vampire. Everyone looked nonplussed.

There was a silence. A puzzled, odd silence.
“Death, vengeance!” Aloise screamed, standing upright. She looked… absolutely mad. Her pale, pale cheeks were tinged with red, and her eyes were spitting sparks. Literally.

Her hair was a mass of snakes that would have put Medusa to shame; they were much longer and silkier. Aloise raised her arms.

When a demon raises their arms, it’s never a good thing. In fact, it’s usually a bad thing. A very bad thing. Kanza, in the middle of pulling himself out from under the TV cabinet, saw, and knew this. One hand automatically reached for the cross on the necklace hanging beneath his thin cotton shirt, gripping the metal so tightly it hurt.

Jhonny stared at the demon.

“You killed me,” he said reproachfully.

Aloise was too busy looking demented to reply.

“I love her,” Kanza whispered, very softly to himself. He was startled to hear the words; it made them true, somehow. And it pierced him right through the depths of his dark, angsty soul. It was sad, because he knew already that it was going to end with one of them dead. Naturally. It just happens that way. there wasn’t going to be any reprieves or special kind of endings. This wasn’t the ‘human falls in love with the vampire and they get married and live happily ever’ after kind of story. You didn’t get those around Midward, though it was certainly rainy enough to warrant it. And there were definitely enough vampires hanging around.

Perhaps it was the distinct lack of greenery, then. Midward didn’t do greenery. It did dirty city streets and grime and things that exploded.

“… And the mighty God said the word, and the heavens opened, and fire came forth.” Romeo was muttering very fast to himself under his breath. He was hunched over on one knee, supporting himself with a shaking hand. “Fire came forth. Fire came forth, darn it! Fire. Hellllo!”

He shook his left hand very hard, staring at it in frustration.

A lot of things happened very fast, then, in that very fast way that things all happen simultaneously at the climax. Really. That’s how climaxes go. Everyone knows this.

Aloise screamed something, demented at her very best and proudest and wildest.

“What are we doing here again?” the rat asked Jhonny in an embarrassed whisper.

“I want revenge,” Jhonny said, sounding puzzled and a little unsure.

“I love her,” Kanza murmured again, and he stared down at the very tiny, toothpick-sized knife in his hand, devastated at this reality.

“FIRE!” Romeo roared.

Lucien panted, and his eyes flickered closed.

Rathiel slumped across the downed troll’s furry head. How it had gotten in there in the first place was a complete mystery. Well, not if you happened to be walking along the outside of a certain street and saw the gaping hole in the concrete wall of a certain pizza parlour.

Orynn grunted painfully.

And out of all of them, only Irony did anything useful. It was a very sad, and profound moment.

“Heya, Tom, it’s Bob, from the office down the hall,” Irony said weakly, from where she was on her hands and knees, mere inches behind Aloise. And she giggled a little, reaching up with a metal spatula that had been previously used for flipping pancakes, but had actually once, a very, very long time ago, served another use.

This spatula had an interesting career. During the course of this career, it had had a strange run-in with a church. And a priest. And a bowl of holy water.

The specifics were rather arduous and probably better not discussed here, but the effect was a life-changing (or rather, life-ending) experience.

The building shook in a resounding explosion. The spatula touched the side of Aloise’s calf. (Not a very auspicious place—it would have been much, much more dramatic had it been her heart or something, but this was Irony. And both the irony, and the Irony, was clear in this situation).

“Ah!” gasped Romeo, and fire flared up all along his arms.

And so it was that the building collapsed in a sad grinding of concrete, plaster, and metalwork, all crying out in pleasure at their long-overdue demolition; Aloise let out the ear-piercing shriek of a demon being assaulted with holy water; and Romeo took the opportunity to quickly lean over and kiss the hawk-nosed demon. He’d somehow produced a rose from somewhere (this will remain a mystery until the end of time), and it was on fire, of course. He was holding it between his teeth. It was extremely dramatic.

“I love you,” Romeo said passionately to the demon, who looked more than surprised.

Then, with astounding speed, Romeo dropped the flaming rose, sprang up, grabbed Irony by the scruff of her neck, and jumped through the window.

Two mangy dogs masquerading as werewolves followed, streaks of silvery grey and brown.

Kanza stared numbly down at his hands. He loved her. He loved her. He—

Someone grabbed him roughly by the shoulder, hauling him over the edge of the sofa. He was scraped up for the third time, surprised and opening his mouth to protest.

“Payback time, mate, I owed you!” the rat shouted as Jhonny Heralds shoved Kanza at the window.

Kanza fell over the edge of the sill, trying to grasp it, and ended up landing painfully on the other side, on the hard concrete of the lonely alley behind the row of abandoned, grubby shops spaces.

A vampire and a talking rat followed, the rat yelling in glee as the vampire overshot just a little and ended up soaring straight over Kanza’s head. He followed their progress with mild shock.

Someone grabbed his shirt; he looked up dizzily into Irony’s flushed face.

“Kvanza,” she said, and she started to giggle hysterically. Her very blue eyes looked a little unfocused. “Kvothe. Kvanza. Geddit?”

“I get it,” responded Kanza, only a little tiredly. “I get it.”

***

There were a lot of people who stopped and stared at the enormous white fountain that roared up like some exploding volcano, two hundred feet into the sky, raining bits of ash and chalky plaster for a three hundred mile radius.

Ned Parker was sitting in a hotel room somewhere on another continent. He stared in awe at the roaring explosion on his television.

“Wow,” he said solemnly.


The End

[Tam]

Eee! =D Way to go, Kathkitty! *fishglomps* I'm totally going to get around to reading this. I have to. Along with Rikku's and Trilly's and probably a half-dozen more.

[Shadaras]

That was fun. ^_^ ..even if the last part (as I said on the 'bloids) seemed like a nightmare-ish dream of Kanza's. It was all quite amusing, however.

I liked this line, by the way 'Were lives measured out on tiny golden scales, filling the globes of a billion delicate hourglasses?'

Um. I can't really give any other comments. 'twas funny and fun to read and altogether quite good. ^_^ ..thanks for posting it, Kathkitty.

[Kathleen]

Thank you, Tamia! =D *fishglomps back* But you really don't need to worry about reading it yet. ^_^

Erm, thank you, too, Shade. ^_^ As I said, it's not really finished. Which is okay. So someday it'll all make more sense, though I did warn you guys! =D

I'm glad it was fun to read, though. Yes. Very glad.

Ehe. Funny how I thought of that line in fast desperation when I just needed something to put there. xD But afterwards I noticed it is kinda cool. ^_^

[Rikku]

I noticed you'd posted this about five minutes before I went to school. xD It's amazing how having something to look forward to makes the day go by slower. One would think it would be the other way round.

*is too busy reading to say anything more*

[Kathleen]

Nov 25, 2008 22:55:54 GMT -5 Rikku said:

I noticed you'd posted this about five minutes before I went to school. xD It's amazing how having something to look forward to makes the day go by slower. One would think it would be the other way round.

*is too busy reading to say anything more*

Aww. xD It is that way. Without a good reason, nonetheless. Funny how that works.

Ahem. I'll stop rambling now. =D *waits rather anxiously and nervously to hear Rikku's verdict on her silly writing*

[Rikku]

'A tall, thin blonde man in the very back smiled at Kanza, revealing a set of very sharp teeth.'

'Romeo laughed heartily. He was one of those incredibly mystifying and annoying people who are perpetually cheery and even-tempered. The type where when you say, “The universe has imploded”, they respond with, “Oh, awesome! I bet the environmentalists are having a picnic; no more earth for us to destroy!” he was also perpetually flirty. He was eyeing Kanza in a very speculative way.'

... Stop making me want to 'ship Scott and Romeo, please. xD *goes hurriedly back to reading*

[Kathleen]

Nov 25, 2008 23:32:38 GMT -5 Rikku said:

'A tall, thin blonde man in the very back smiled at Kanza, revealing a set of very sharp teeth.'

'Romeo laughed heartily. He was one of those incredibly mystifying and annoying people who are perpetually cheery and even-tempered. The type where when you say, “The universe has imploded”, they respond with, “Oh, awesome! I bet the environmentalists are having a picnic; no more earth for us to destroy!” he was also perpetually flirty. He was eyeing Kanza in a very speculative way.'

... Stop making me want to 'ship Scott and Romeo, please. xD *goes hurriedly back to reading*

Not my fault! xD Blame Kit. And.. and Twilight! *brandishes book* I could not help myself. x3 I had to make fun of everything I possibly could.

.. and Scott and Romeo. Now there's.. *brick'd and gagged before she can finish*

[Shadaras]

Nov 25, 2008 23:35:07 GMT -5 Kathleen said:

Nov 25, 2008 23:32:38 GMT -5 Rikku said:

'A tall, thin blonde man in the very back smiled at Kanza, revealing a set of very sharp teeth.'

'Romeo laughed heartily. He was one of those incredibly mystifying and annoying people who are perpetually cheery and even-tempered. The type where when you say, “The universe has imploded”, they respond with, “Oh, awesome! I bet the environmentalists are having a picnic; no more earth for us to destroy!” he was also perpetually flirty. He was eyeing Kanza in a very speculative way.'

... Stop making me want to 'ship Scott and Romeo, please. xD *goes hurriedly back to reading*

Not my fault! xD Blame Kit. And.. and Twilight! *brandishes book* I could not help myself. x3 I had to make fun of everything I possibly could.

.. and Scott and Romeo. Now there's.. *brick'd and gagged before she can finish*

I can give you weirder mental images of 'ships, if you care. xD ..like Romeo and either Lucifer or Ri. Or anyone in this and Ri, honestly. Ri amuses me that way.

And I don't get how Twilight influenced this. I really don't.

And I'd originally had something else to say but I forget what it was.