“Isabella, Isadora? Why are you here? Did you get in trouble or something.” Albaer asked, briefly surprised by their sudden appearance.

Both of the pair knew right away something was wrong, white faced as he was, there was no hiding that, but they independently realized that to say anything then would only make it worse. “You’re the only one of the three of us who knows where to go next.” Raziel answered with a chortle and a warm smile of her ruby lips.

“Yeah… this is a much bigger school than what we had imagined, do you want us to get lost?” Lialah asked with a quizzical cocking of her head which said what a ridiculous idea that was.

“Right… right, sure, of course, this way. Uh… I left my backpack in the classroom though.” Albaer said, until Raziel held it up in her left hand.

“You did,” she smirked, “but luckily I happened to see it.” She said and held it out at chest height.

Albaer took it and slung it on his back, glancing back over his shoulder to where Karen sat, the old woman looked briefly stunned at Raziel’s feat, and he swiftly stepped to one side to block the woman’s view of the dark haired illusion bearing demoness. He leaned forward, disguising his intended whisper by hunching his back while he donned the backpack again and said, “Thank you, but this backpack weighs about thirty-five pounds. Not many girls your age could just hold it out at chest height like it was nothing.”

Raziel gave a little nod of understanding, and they made their way out of the room.

The hall was less than crowded thanks to the delay, in fact only a handful of people, twos or threes, were seen in the empty halls as teenagers made their way with haste that was a little too delayed in use to get into their classes.

Albaer however, didn’t use any haste. “This way.” He said and began to head down the hall, while he did, Lialah put her hand on his shoulder.

“Are you all right?” She asked, looking at him with wide eyed worry. The tinge of heartfelt concern wasn’t in every syllable of the question, it was in every letter of every word.

That made it both easier and harder for the young man to bear. “Yeah… no… I mean, it’s normal, see they have something here called ‘zero tolerance’. If you fight, you’re in trouble, period. It doesn’t matter if you started it, or finished it, or even if you lost when you were just defending yourself. You’re in trouble the same as the- the one who provoked you. I tried fighting back once, a long time ago. It just made trouble for my mother… and mom, she- well, you know her advice.” He sighed, “It’s not that nobody believes I don’t start things, some don’t believe me, like that bastard, but that it just doesn’t matter if I did or not. Even if they believe me, I ‘fought’ so I’m in trouble…”

Raziel and Lialah took a moment to process that.

“That’s stupid.” The sisters said at the same moment.

“Tell me about it, now they want to have a conference with my… my mother…” Albaer lost his step for a moment, a brief shiver came over his body and he was blinking back tears. “Th-They don’t understand, she needs rest. She can’t deal with this… I should have just let Jason do what he wanted… they’ll…”

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Raziel took one long step and then moved in front of him, she whirled around to face him, dark hair whipping about behind her she said, “She won’t have to. Or… did you forget, I don’t actually look like this? I can just as easily look like her.”

Albaer stopped dead. “Wait you can… you think you can impersonate her?” He asked in a rough whisper, his deep brown eyes loomed with wild and desperate hope. “I won’t have to tell her?”

“With ease.” Raziel said with a little smirk, “But I think Lialah would do a better job than I would, she is the one who used to perform.”

“On the stage.” Lialah pointed out, Albaer resumed his walk down the hall, and Lialah tightened her lips, “That’s different, something like this… it’s different.”

“Please… try?” Albaer pleaded while his face turned red again.

Lialah touched his arm after a moment, her slender fingers closed around his bicep and briefly tightened over the muscle there. ‘He’s asking me to impersonate a dead woman… that he doesn’t even know is dead… or has at least denied to the point where he doesn’t believe she’s gone…’ It was hard not to think of home in that moment. The tragedies of wars to create sacrificial heroes, it had birthed a whole field of art, music, plays, paintings, and sculpting… and the look on his face reminded her of one such work. Titled simply ‘The Loss’ it was a young angel holding the body of his mother as his city burned around him. The utter defeat and empty, hollow look just before the cry could begin resonated with her when she saw Albaer’s face. She couldn’t say no, instead she simply said, “I’ll try.”

“Thank you. Both of you.” Albaer said and then reached for the chrome handle of the door. “This is the next class, biology, the study of life,” he said, cutting off anything they might have said, he hesitated, “Lisa is in this one… so just… you know.” He briefly looked down, took a deep breath, and opened the door.

‘Oh yeah! The bitch I practically made wet herself!’ Raziel put her hands behind her head, interlocking her fingers and walked in after him with a smug smile on her face. ‘I wonder if I can do it again looking like this… nah, better to keep it quiet I guess.’ She dismissed the idea, but it was a pleasant thought.

‘That poor girl… she must be so lost…’ Lialah thought and looked knowingly at the back of her sister’s head, she knew Raziel better than anyone, and that smug look she could feel on her sister even without seeing it, told her all she needed to. ‘I guess I should be glad she didn’t do worse to LIsa than terrify her.’

She couldn’t help but think back to the last time Raziel lost her temper on someone. ‘They never did find the tusks from that orc… well… they did find one of them… but given where she put it, he didn’t want it back.’ Lialah suppressed the shudder of disgust.

When Albaer entered the room his eyes immediately went to Lisa, up at the front, a skinny, middle aged man in thick glasses and a lab coat looked down over the rims when he saw the late arrivals. “Albaer and… whoever, you’re late.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Lane. It couldn’t be helped.” Albaer said and stepped out of the way to gesture to the two girls accompanying him. “This is Isadora and Isabella Blackworth, they’re staying with me for a few months and they’ll be attending school here while they do. They’re shadowing me for the day.”

Their teacher’s nose was narrow and had a faint wheeze to it when he breathed, and his narrow, even shallow cheeks puffed out a little when he spoke. “Take a seat, sit with Albaer and follow him. Albaer, open your book to page one hundred seventy-two.”

The room was unique in the eyes of both angel and demon, the school of their homeworld consisted of a single long seat and table per row set facing an instructor. This classroom had multiple stools around individual raised rectangular tables, each one with a sink and a series of unfamiliar instruments.

With some reluctance the pair went to a side wall, took a pair of metal stools and brought them to where Albaer sat. Curiosity about the glass tubes set in small containers that held the tubes upright and the wide round bottles which narrowed up at the top. The little red dashes that ran up the sides of the bottles made no sense to either of the two.

Raziel distracted herself by looking down at the cream white paper and the text therein. ‘The structure of cells… the building block of… no way… this is what ‘flesh’ and ‘organs’ are made of?!’ The demoness shoved herself close to Albaer, and hunched over the intricate color pictures showing the parts of the cell in a human body.

Lialah however, found herself looking around the room while the teacher went on, he may have looked somewhat absurd, but he droned on with such passion, his voice carrying clear to the far side of the class, that it was hard not to pick up at least some of what he was saying. It was because of her roving eyes that she caught Lisa’s steady glare at Raziel.