RYAN. RUNNING OUT OF TIME FOR EXPLANATIONS!
“Chris E. Gramyre!” Ryan exclaimed before anyone else could answer Megan’s question, disgusted with himself. Evan groaned at Ryan’s identification of ‘that boy.’ Everyone else fixed puzzled gazes on Ryan as he continued. “Of course! I can’t believe it took me this long to figure it out. Frankly, I blame the rest of you people for keeping me so preoccupied. Really!”
“Chrissy?” Megan asked, sounding much like she’d used to when she thought he might be making fun of her but wasn’t really sure. (A frequent occurrence in Ryan and Megan’s early relationship.)
“His name’s definitely not Chrissy,” ‘Katier’ Ryuyama said, as the two people talking to the boy in question split off, stepping aside as the two people in line behind them advanced so that they were next to Chris.
Ryan frowned at both of them. Not that they noticed, because they were peering in Chris’s direction along with everyone else around them now. At least the focus of the crowd’s attention was off the group of them for the time being. Maybe Evan would relax.[1] “Come on, apply a little context,” Ryan said. “Chris middle initial E. last name Gramyre.”
[1] This was a little joke, just for Ryan.
Night-haired Chris, in the meantime, appeared to verbally greet the kids who had just stepped up next to him. Then he criss-crossed his arms in front of himself such that he clearly offered his right hand to the boy on his left to shake and his left hand to the girl on his right. “Great Powers, what a dork,” Ryan commented, provoking a little giggle out of Katier and a snort out of Evan as Chris shook hands with both kids simultaneously.
Ryan continued, “I know his full middle name, but it was surprisingly hard to find, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want it out there.”
Evan asked, “What’s he doing? What’s going on?”
Katier giggled again. “Meeting people, I think. He said he wants to learn the name of everyone in school by… solstice? Nisha?” Nisha did not respond, but simply gazed toward Gramyre as if she wanted to believe that nothing was happening behind her. Katier shrugged. “Probably solstice.”
“Huh,” Evan said. “Explains the parade, I guess.”
“That would be a trick,” Ryan said, impressed. “I don’t know if even I could do that.” This was a lie—he already had. Evan, who knew this, rolled his eyes.
“Who is he?” Megan asked, still sounding rather dazed. “Does he… this might be an odd question, but does he have green eyes?”
Ryan had seen some commentary on how odd Gramyre’s eyes were on other kids’ Social profiles, but that still had left him ill-prepared for the experience. Even knowing it could happen, he’d felt struck by the impression of the green of the boy’s eyes. Impressive distance on the effect. And Ryan didn’t really find any physical interest in any humans beside Angie, so he couldn’t even imagine how the effect might have hit Megan, who had oft wished for a boy with Angie’s lovely green eyes to marry when they’d been kids. (Ryan would point out that with enough money anyone could have green eyes like Angie by purchasing an enchantment or the right elixir, which had always annoyed both Angie and Megan for reasons they’d never been able to articulate in a way that made any sense to Ryan.)
“Omygoshes!” Katier said, perking up rather like she had when Ryan had called Megan ‘Megs’ a little earlier. “You won’t be able to prepare yourself! His eyes are downright fae.”
Chris and thus the crowd behind him started moving again.
“I know his eyes are weird, but you couldn’t possibly have seen that they were green from here,” Nisha said, without looking at any of them.
“I sure felt like I did,” Evan said, his tone more puzzled than anything.
“Wait, did you not?” Ryan directed the question at Nisha, as Chris moved out of sight behind the Social Studies building, and the orderly front of the crowd behind him started moving as well.
“What? From this far away? Of course not. Did you see them too?” she replied, frowning at him as if she thought he was mocking her somehow.
“Yeah, totally,” Ryan said, frowning back.
“You can definitely see the green of his eyes from too far away to be entirely natural—it’s pretty uncanny, and super hot—but I couldn’t see that from here either,” Katier said. “Maybe you all have great eyes.”
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“You know I don’t,” said Megan, who Ryan knew must be wearing contacts at that very moment. Katier shrugged.
They all stood silent for a moment, then Ryan said, “Interesting. Well, you sure have been out of the loop, eh, Megs? Chris Gramyre is our brand new freshfolk class Light Bearer, which is a relief because all the other classes this year have one and we were the sad kids without one. Very embarrassing.” Nisha and Katier both nodded at that, their expressions making it seem like they were surprised that he would have enough class spirit to care about their lack of a Light Bearer.
Megan fully turned and was actually looking at Ryan as he talked, rather than at Nisha and Katier or the ground like she’d been for most of the conversation. Ryan continued, “The Gramyres—their name is spelled G R A M Y R E if you’re curious—are a family of Light Bearers who moved into the old Gorelick keep[1] on Hunter’s Point, right up the road from the Bakilis’ place. I’m sure you’d be familiar. Not a Light Bearing family, to be clear, though they come from those too. A family of Light Bearers. Chris is a Light Bearer and his father is a Light Bearer and his step-mother is a Light Bearer and his half-sister is a Light Bearer, and that’s the whole family, but four for four is still pretty impressive.” Ryan noted, as he spoke, that Chris’s parade had come to a halt again.
[1] A mansion sized towerhouse, which is to say, a literal keep, in the small castle sense.
Getting into it, enjoying himself, Ryan continued. “His father is Bran Gramyre, of the Providence Gramyres. Bran, being the third Light Bearing Gramyre of his generation, followed the family tradition and took up the life of an errant. He was successful as hell; he never even went on a delve, but he’s drowning in silver regardless. His career highlights include single-handedly slaying over five hundred Terror-class Beasts, sixty-three Nightmare-class Beasts, aaaaand one Disaster-class Beast, making him only one of three hundred and thirty seven Fredonics to have ever killed a Disaster-class on their own—he was number three two three. Has his own page on Wikipedia and everything. He’s also—”
“Uuuuuuuuuhngh,” Evan groaned and glared at Ryan, which meant Ryan was the only one of them paying attention to the way that Chris’s parade was deforming forward, the people in the back half of the crowd all pushing—practically scrambling—forward in a way that made Ryan suspect they were all trying to get a good view of something going on in the quad, presumably with Chris.
Evan continued as Ryan watched the crowd’s behavior: “He’s also participated in the slaying of twenty-three more Disaster-classes and eleven Catastrophes and yadadadadah. You’re killing me, repeating all this stuff again. If Megan really wants to know, can you tell her when I’m not around?”
“Powers, chill,” Ryan said, wrinkling his nose at Evan. “He has impressive stats. I think you’re just stubbornly pretending you don’t think this guy’s rad as eleven hells. I mean you yadedahed over the fact that he participated in the 1606 Chattanooga Devastation hunt, one of only seven Devastations to be brought down this century. Granted, that’s because most of them have been brought down already—new ones just don’t crop up that frequently with the dungeons mostly under control. But even still.”
Katier seemed to be following all this with bright interest. Nisha, meanwhile, stared at Ryan as if his head had grown a second, smaller head.
“Sure, whatever, his dad’s very cool! Who gives a piss?” Evan asked, continuing to be stubborn. He wasn’t ever going to make it as a hunter if he couldn’t get his head around the idea he couldn’t bloody do it solo with a Powers-cursed[1] handgun. “Chris isn’t his cool dad, he’s just our classmate.”
[1] Not literally. That doesn’t really happen, at least not anymore, and certainly not to any tool so modern as a handgun, at least so far as the greatest minds of wizardry can determine. Just a figure of speech these days.
“Who also a Light Bearer and is already actively hunting!” Ryan said, extra brightly to annoy Evan more, since Evan wanted to be a cranky-pants just because Ryan had very reasonably been trying to get him to introduce himself to Chris once school started so he could try and get Chris to take him out hunting with him as fire support and local guide. Which was the only way Evan would be hunting without making a whole fireteam worth of gunner friends, which he wouldn’t do if he refused to join the gunning team, which he also was being stubborn about.[1] “So, Chris’s step-mother is Miho Hayasaka, of the Gifu Hayasakas, though like the Bakilis, Miho’s branch of the Hayasaka have been in Fredonia since the declining years of the Long War. She—”
[1] Stiiiiill. Would’ve been a lot harder to keep him Exiled, Ryan occasionally pointed out, if he were the star of the Asphodel gunning’s team, instead of actively keeping a hood over his lantern like he’d insisted on.
“Great War,” Evan said, testily. Full of testes. Ryan couldn’t help a tiny snort at the thought, which made Evan glare at him more. “I don’t know why you insist on calling it that,” Evan added.
“It’s more accurate and sounds better. And I’m going to say Long War when talking to Gramyre and he’s going to nod along without blinking,” Ryan replied. “He’ll think it’s weird when you lot all call it the Great War. Where he’s from? For sure.”
“I don’t need, like, a full family profile Ryan, I’ve got the idea,” Megan said, faintly. “I doubt the boy—Chris—is going anywhere, so I’ll learn more about him later. It was just weird and I was thrown. We should get back to the subject at hand, now, if you don’t mind.” Nisha and Katier looked like they definitely minded and would rather stay on the subject of the new Light Bearer.
“Sure!” Ryan said. “Were you wanting me to go back to the types of gossips, or to the various theories as to why we were Exiled, or…?”
Speaking of staying on the subject, Katier cut in. “Actually, sorry to interrupt, Megan, I know this is going to sound ehhhh kinda bad given the circumstances, but I swear I mean well, really, they can come, we can keep getting lectured by this small strange boy you used to hang out with, but I kinda think you want to go get in that line right now to see if you can meet Chris.”
In a monotone, Megan said, “Katie, have you lost your Powers-forsaken mind?”