“Open the door princess~. With silence like this, one wonders if there is something wrong. There isn’t, is there?”
It was to the point that the man's voice was making her head hurt even worse. It felt like there was… something wriggling around in her brain. Something that had been dislodged for the most part, but was still somewhat there, enough that it reacted to the man's voice. The doorknob rattled again as the man tested the lock. Though Rose was still unsure of his identity or purpose, a small part of her was glad that it was habit at this point to lock her door.
“Princess~, I saw you go in. Why do you not respond? Wouldn’t that be the polite thing to do? Why do you not respond? Why did you fail why did you fail why did you fail DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD IT IS TO GET OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS ON THIS ISLAND?”
The door rattled and shuddered as the screaming man on the other side planted a foot against it, kicking the wood experimentally. Out of the corner of her eye, in the part of her vision that wasn't obscured by the pillow she had her head shoved into, Princess Rose could see the door flex from the impact. Another boot slammed against the door, causing it to creak in its hinges. Another. And another. All amidst the unhinged ranting that split the air like constant cracks of thunder.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Another voice rang out amid the choking atmosphere, sending a shot of relief through Rose's stomach. This one was familiar, a higher-pitched voice of a girl she'd often seen around the dorm and in the company of her soon-to-be-knight. Could it be that he’d sensed her distress and sent an ally, one who could access the girl’s dorm without any issues arising, to assist her?
Truly, her knight possessed formidable foresight.
“What, you aren’t going to answer, you creep? I saw you kicking on Rose’s door! Get the hell out of here!”
“Now now, no need to be so aggressive, Alexis Rhodes.” The man said in smooth, almost oily tones that made Rose’s back shiver in disgust. It almost felt like his words were dripping over her body as if a bucket full of sewer slime was dumped over her head. “I know that the girl’s dorm is traditionally off-limits to the guys, but I am a gentleman at heart and I noticed Princess Rose retreating into her room from the quad looking quite unwell. See~, I was simply inquiring about whether I should call the nurse, that’s all!”
Alexis snorted in disdain. "Yeah, and you must think I’m one dumb, gullible gal, huh? Nurse Fontaine is already on her way. If you know what’s good for you, you’d better be gone before she gets here.”
The flood of relief shooting filling Rose’s stomach was quickly replaced by a spike of terror, and then a certain amount of confusion as a commotion broke out outside of her dorm room as soon as Alexis Rhodes finished speaking. The man started shouting angrily, which caused Alexis to reply with equal volume. A great force hit her door, which was quickly followed by a startled yelp and the shattering of glass as some sort of solid, fleshy object hit one of the windows in the hallway. Then there was a hearty yet distant ‘thump’ as a body finished its arc out of the third-floor dorm window to land in the rose bushes below.
Silence followed, silence in which Rose screwed her eyes tight to forcibly banish her horrendous migraine. Though her movements were unsteady, she placed both her hands on her legs to help move them, jerkily traveling from the blessed comfort of her bed to peer through the peephole in her door – an object of which she noted with some amount of concern was slightly bowed in the middle.
A knocking sounded on her door right before her eye met the peephole, and Rose started slightly in surprise.
“Hey, Princess Rose? Are you doing alright? Some creep was trying to break into your room. I don’t know if you’re actually in there, but I sent Mindy to grab Nurse Fontaine just in case.”
Rose breathed a tiny sigh of relief, disengaging the lock in her door and opening it to reveal Alexis, who despite her hair being slightly disheveled and there being a broken window nearby, everything else in the hallway looked mostly normal.
“Wow, Lexy, you weren’t kidding.” Jasmine, who Rose had for some reason never had the fortune to speak with until now, poked her head out from behind Alexis’s shoulder to scan Rose’s figure up and down. “The princess looks all sorts of terrible. By the way, do you know that creep? He was sporting Obelisk Blue colors, but I don’t know too many of the boys over that way besides Chazz. Most of them are too much of a prick to bother with.”
“I…” Princess Rose clutched her head with ragged breaths as her migraine came back with full force. “I am unsure. I would have to see that ruffian with my own eyes, I would think. His voice is indeed familiar.”
Alexis grabbed Princess Rose’s shoulders to steady her, peering deep into her eyes with a look of warm concern. “I don’t know what that weirdo was going to try if he got in, but it’s okay. I judo-flipped him out the window. Once Nurse Fontaine gets here, I’ll give his description to her, and she can tell Professor Crowler. I don’t believe for a single second that he will allow that sort of behavior to continue.” Alexis finished with a dark glance at the broken window.
That was something Rose believed. If it was last year, she might have been skeptical, but the man Professor Crowler had become over the summer was a man worthy of respect. No doubt the unsettling stranger-yet-not-stranger would be found and punished. Now all she had to do was push her splitting migraine aside to be a good host for her rescuers… and perhaps find out the true reason for the visit of her saviors.
“Dear friends, while this princess appreciates the timing of your visit, one wonders if this was naught but simple chance, or if there is something that is needed?” Princess Rose imperceptibly gritted her teeth to power through the pain, pulling out a handkerchief from one of the hidden pockets located on her dress to lightly dab at her own forehead.
Alexis looked at her strangely for a moment, as if mentally deciphering Rose’s words before she could start thinking of a response.
“Bastion and Phil got worried about you after the duel.” Alexis eventually answered. “They can’t go in the girl’s dorm without raising some eyebrows, so they asked if I would go. I said yes because I was worried about you too.”
It was a unique feeling, to know someone was genuinely worried about your health. That feeling rushed through Rose’s heart like a river of fire flooding her body. Even her pounding headache was forgotten for a second (but swiftly remembered).
“My thanks, then. Please do convey that to my knight and his friend.” Rose stepped away from Alexis to make a little bit of room and then curtseyed, spreading it into a deep gesture that conveyed her sincere gratitude. “Though I am afraid my head is troubling me somewhat. All I should need is a slight bit of rest, so if that is all…”
Alexis nodded her head and spoke in a soft, calm voice that was clearly meant to not cause any issues with Rose’s head.
“Yes, of course. After you’re feeling better, I do have a few questions to ask you. I think Nurse Fontaine will as well. But!” Alexis waved her hands frantically upon seeing Rose step forward, clearly intent on hearing the questions so that her rescuers would not have to wait, “After you get some rest, girl! Mindy was planning to ask Fontaine to bring some stuff to help with your head, so we can talk then.”
Rose nodded her head in thanks and slipped back through her door, flopping onto her bed in an unladylike fashion and falling asleep as soon as her head hit her pillow.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
“Knight?”
Alexis mouthed in confusion toward Jasmine once the door to Princess Rose’s room closed with a soft ‘click’.
Jasmine shrugged and replied in hushed whispers.
“Lex, you know, I know, that girl is really nice but a bit nuts in the head. Always has been. I’m more worried about that creep who was trying to break into her room. He was halfway through kicking her door down!”
Alexis nodded, a more serious expression sliding over her face. She walked over to the broken window and peered down. There was an indentation in the rose bushes where the boy had landed, but there was no one to be seen. Truthfully, if she hadn’t been so worried about Rose, she would have preferred to pursue that guy. Obviously, he wasn’t up to any good. However, that was the problem. Was he just being a total creep, or was he involved with that plot Bastion and Phil were concerned about? It was hard to say for sure. All she could do was work with the teachers to find that guy, and fill the boys in while she did. They would likely know exactly what to do with that information. Those two were serious smart cookies when they knocked their heads together.
“Well, at least it shouldn’t be hard to find that guy.” Jasmine broke up Alexis’s thoughts as the girl moved to look out the window next to her. “A three-story fall right into the rose bushes. Even if he didn’t break or sprain anything, the weirdo is probably scratched to heck and back. I bet he looks like he fought an army of cats and lost!”
“For sure.” Alexis agreed and turned away from the window to watch Nurse Fontaine, in all her fearsome wrath, bound up the stairs two at a time with Mindy huffing and puffing behind her. It was a good thing Mindy had always been a fast runner. The sooner the details on that Obelisk Blue boy with brown, spikey hair could get out, the better. Plus, now that the nurse was here, they could do the little debrief session in the hallway, as Alexis in no way wanted to tempt fate by leaving Rose’s door unguarded until the girl was well again.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
As it turned out, the debriefing session was extremely quick. Nurse Fontaine expertly extracted the full tale from the girls and made the executive decision to let Rose rest for an hour until they disturbed her. Then, depending on how the girl was feeling, she would either be moved to the infirmary or allowed to go back to class. Alexis of course also made sure to mention the suspicions the boys had, which Fontaine promised to relay to Crowler, Hibiki, and Sheppard as soon as possible. Then, about five minutes after she arrived, Nurse Fontaine turned around, heading back to the infirmary to look through her stores for anything that might help. Mindy jogged back over to their shared dorm room to grab three camping chairs, and the girls sat outside Rose’s dorm room passing the time with a few friendly games of duel monsters.
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-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
“Dude look at that guy go! He’s fast as fuck boy!” Phil pointed at some Obelisk Blue student he’d never bothered to speak to before running across the edge of the quad like Zorc Necrophades himself was chasing him (or perhaps a very angry Ms. Hibiki!). The guy looked like he'd lost a fight with a thorn bush the size of Mike Tyson, and with a right hook to match.
“Raizou?” Chazz looked incredulously at the student. “Yes, I’m right. That’s Raizou Mototani. He used to follow me around last school year, before he got angry that I was spending time with students that weren’t blue. I told him to stuff it, and he did. Arrogant fellow, thinking he could control who The Chazz speaks to.”
“So, a stereotypical Obelisk Blue.” Phil shrugged. “Present company excluded, of course. And Alexis as well since she’s off talking to Rose. Her friends are chill too, I suppose. Dang, he’s fast. Like Sonic the Hedgehog on near-lethal amounts of cocaine.”
Fast was an understatement. Raizou cleared the quad, albeit the edge of it, in under a minute. He never once looked back and seemingly ignored the oozing scratches carved across every bit of flesh that wasn’t covered by his uniform.
“Is it just me…” Syrus broke in, eyes trailing after the retreating back of Raizou, “Or did one of his arms look extra floppy? The left one. Are arms supposed to bend like that?”
"I would say they are not," Bastion confirmed. "Good catch Syrus, I noted that fact as well. Two of us seeing it means it is unlikely our eyes are tricking us. Methinks this Raizou character may have gotten on the wrong side of the wrong person here on the island. Hopefully, he will see the sense in seeking Nurse Fontaine's help with his damaged arm. Perhaps also with disinfecting those scratches,” Bastion added on at the end like it was an afterthought.
Chazz nodded along, squinting his eyes as he appeared deep in thought.
“You got something?” Phil instantly noticed the change in his friend’s demeanor and nudged him to spill the beans.
“I don’t know.” The prickly boy readily admitted. “It almost looked like Raizou altered his uniform with white colors. Not the entire jacket, but enough that I could see from here.”
Phil cocked his head in confusion.
“And?”
“Unless Raizou has completely flipped his personality from last year, he would never change his uniform to have any other color than blue be the primary color, the main focus of the uniform. Even the guys who don’t see all other dorms as inferior would still have enough pride in Obelisk Blue that they wouldn’t do that. With how Raizou is? It’s downright odd that he modified his uniform to make white the main color.”
Phil and Bastion shared a look. Uniform modifications weren't unusual on the island, but Chazz was right. In all three dorms, there were hardly any students who would change their uniform so some other theme overpowered the basic idea of pride in one's dorm. Dorm colors were a big thing on the island. Even Slifer Reds were fiercely proud of the dorm they were in, even if it was considered by most people as the weakest.
"Eisenstein had a strange obsession with the color white," Bastion mentioned with a thoughtful glance in the direction Raizou disappeared in. "He did not speak much of it, but all of his clothes were white and most of his decor was as well. It was an oddity that extended to clothing far past his lab coats. A sign of his eccentricity, or do these colors signify something else?”
“Aster Phoenix was in a silver tuxedo when he dueled Zane. Silver isn’t white, but it is close.” Syrus piped up.
“So that’s three examples.” Phil concluded. “To call it a real lead would be stretching things, b-“
“But it’s a detail worth looking into.” Bastion finished Phil’s sentence. The two boys grinned and bumped their fists together, clearly pleased they could still pull it off as easily as breathing. “Our amount of true leads is criminally low. Anything that can get us a precious scrap of information at this point in time is unbelievably important. Knowledge is power.”
“Yeah. So key takeaway - be on the lookout for obvious white themes and jacket alters that spit on dorm pride. Don’t jump to conclusions, just keep an eye on anyone you see that meets the description. Listen to them talk. If they start yammering about the light or a seer, then we’ve got a problem. Same with if they try to duel you out of the blue. It could be innocent, or it could be a rapidly approaching shadow game.”
The rest of the boys nodded in agreement to Phil’s loose strategy, and once they realized that Alexis would probably be a few more minutes, they broke away to dip into the cafeteria for a bite to eat before they continued their vigil out in the quad.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Over in the cafeteria, it was like nothing had ever happened. Lunchtime was closing in on its last ten minutes, yet there was still a steady influx of students streaming in and out of the building, either racing to get some grub or racing to get to their next class. The cafeteria itself was a pretty relaxed space for the most part. Sure, the majority of students sat with people from their own dorms, but it wasn’t a rule that was enforced and there were plenty of kids that sat at mixed tables. Near the head of the room, the professors got their own special table, for the days that they didn’t feel like eating in their office or classroom.
For Professor Crowler, it was a place he ate at every day for every meal, even though he had a nice, quiet, and rather large office all to himself, as was his right as the headmaster of Obelisk Blue. No, he preferred having lunch with the kids, and the setup suited him quite well. The separate professor’s table meant he could enjoy small talk with his colleagues, but the students still felt comfortable enough to walk up to the table if they had a fun joke to share, had a question, or just wanted to say hi. Of course, with a few of his colleagues stuck on patrol duty, there were far fewer at the table than there usually was (for instance, Ms. Hibiki was walking her route so Crowler could get a bite to eat, and Banner was busy doing things in his laboratory that Crowler honestly did not want to know about).
Still, there were a handful of other professors at the table, and Phillip had just proudly walked away after sharing a joke that was quite funny, even though Crowler was forced to reprimand the boy for how utterly crude it was.
“So how about those Giants?”
Crowler took another delicious bite out of his BLT sandwich and turned his head to Professor Stein as he chewed his food. Truly, whatever sauce the cooks used in his sandwich this time was quite heavenly. It even had a bit of a ‘tang’ to it, which was both different from the norm and quite interesting.
“Do you even have to ask?” Crowler said knowingly once he swallowed. “I have money on the Yomiuri Giants sweeping the series title again this year.”
“True, true.” Stein nodded in agreement, taking a pleased bite out of his own slice of Chicago-style deep-dish pizza. That was another thing Crowler was quite happy about that changed this year. Not the pizza, of course. That was always good. No, it was Stein’s attitude. The duel theory teacher had been notoriously bitter for years, always snapping at students and despising people who went against his polity of ignorance not being tolerated. Yet, throughout the previous school year, stretching even through this year, his attitude had begun to change. The man still had moments where his former acrid attitude broke through, but he seemed almost… happy these days. From what Crowler had heard, Stein rarely even bothered snapping at Jaden for sleeping in class. Though, now that he thought about it, perhaps it helped that Misawa boy was quite the attentive student, and Phillip was as sharp as a knife when it came to duel theory (when the boy actually bothered to try). The Rhodes girl was of course also an incredible student, no longer being weighed down by the disappearance of her elder brother.
He could relate to Stein in a way. Having students who actually paid attention and engaged in class was one of the most wonderful feelings a teacher could experience.
Crowler took another hearty bite of his sandwich as he nodded along cheerfully to Stein excitedly recounting the most recent Giant’s game, only pausing to grin cheekily and flex his muscles at a student that came up to ask how buff he could get. The answer? Very.
Life was a bit difficult at the time. There was a strange force targeting the island, danger in every corner, but lunchtime in the café, lighthearted talks with his coworkers, and teaching students hungry to learn felt like the cracks in his heart caused by those difficulties were constantly being repaired by expert construction workers.
And then his heart felt like it skipped a beat. Enough so that he immediately noticed. Crowler looked down at his chest quizzically. For some reason… his face, no, nearly his whole body felt strangely hot. He let out a cough that sounded less like a cough and more like a cannon firing. He could feel his throat slightly constricting. Stein paused his baseball talk to look at Crowler in concern, but Crowler waved his colleague off before pulling a handkerchief out of his pocket to cough into again.
Something was wrong. He could feel it. Another cough boomed out and his heart rate felt like it was noticeably increasing.
Then, Crowler understood exactly what was happening. There was no food stuck in his throat, and he possessed no allergies. This was something else. His vision flared, and he fought through the slowly gathering fog in his mind to shoot to his feet, waving off the questions from Stein with a distracted wave of his hand. If what was happening was what he thought was happening, there was no way he was willing to let the students see, to scare them out of their minds. He would deal with this himself if it meant they could keep their innocence for even a few hours longer.
Crowler screwed his eyes shut and then forced them open again. He grabbed his glass of water, still half full, and a nearby saltshaker before speedwalking toward the nearest men’s restroom located right outside of the cafeteria with an air of nearly complete calm but still mild urgency, as if all the water he’d drank earlier was only just now hitting his system in one fell swoop.
The door to the bathroom slammed open. Where he had put his hand to open it, right in the middle, there was a massive dent. Crowler couldn’t help himself. He had tried to control his own strength, but everything… felt a bit off. Almost like he was observing his own actions from the other side of a TV screen. The cap to the saltshaker was unscrewed and tossed aside, landing somewhere in the corner of the room with a clatter of tin against the tile floor. He lifted the shaker and callously dumped its entire contents into his water, before steeling himself and downing the mixture in one gulp.
His vision blurred again and he vomited loudly and forcibly into the sink, expelling large chunks of undigested BLT across the porcelain bowl. His heart constricted again to the point where he could almost hear it laboring way with his own ears, and he fell to a knee. One of Crowler’s mighty hands gripped the sink in an attempt to steady himself and heave his body up. He had to get out of the bathroom now that he’d purged his system. He didn’t know how much of the poison was puked out, but hopefully he’d bought enough time to make it to the infirmary. Nurse Fontaine would know what to do. She was a smart woman, one who could have easily gotten a top job at any hospital in the nation if she hadn’t fallen in love with the academy.
His hand jerked and tightened, a dribble of blood falling from his lips as Crowler heaved himself to a standing position out of pure, undiluted willpower, accidentally biting his lips in the process with enough force to split the skin. The sink cracked from the strength of his iron grip, the edges of the porcelain shattering with enough force to carve deep grooves into his hand. He couldn’t tell if it was a trick of his desperate mind, but it sounded like his own ragged panting was taking over the entire world as a sound that existed everywhere at once, burrowing into his ears like a gleeful python trying to wrap its coils around his brain. His vision darkened and he fell to a knee once more, with enough force that the tile floor cracked.
Every second that passed, it felt like his throat was swelling to unbelievable amounts, causing his vision to be filled with a growing cover of haze and darkness. His limbs, once so mighty, felt like they were filled with heavy weights of lead, heavy enough that they were beyond even his bench-pressing record of nearly 300 pounds. His muscles surged forward in an attempt to move, but they betrayed him. He fell to another knee, causing another set of tiles to crack with a splitting sound that just barely made it past the panting noises that engulfed his ears.
The poison was simply acting too fast, even after he'd purged his stomach as Nurse Fontaine had described as an emergency procedure as a fun fact in her bid to win the last all-staff trivia night. It was all happening impossibly fast, faster than any earthly poison should be capable of.
As his vision finally began to shut off, the only things he saw were some sort of hallucination of his Chaos Ancient Gear Giant leaning over him, hands crackling with spitting electricity, and a rush of long black hair as someone in a red coat sprinted into the bathroom.
Yet, there was only one thought in Crowler’s fading mind, the sad realization that he was going to have to miss his after-lunch class, one that both he and his students had been looking forward to for weeks by now.
“Damn…”