savethecitydesu | Nightmare!! The march of the hallway demon lords!

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Nightmare!! The march of the hallway demon lords!

Who: Tsuchi Utazawa, Takeo Akiyama +others/open.
When: The morning after the discovery of magic. Break between the first class hour.
What: Hallway terror
Where: Probably the hallways

"Utazawa, you know what makes something wonderful? Its improbability. And having a respectable, rule-abiding atmosphere in this school is almost as improbable as, say, someone discovering magical artifacts here, or something of the sort," he said. That "he" was a boy whose gakuran was probably on the top tier of impeccable school uniforms, adorned with a disciplinary committee armband. His hair was a mousy gray-black, slicked back and nicely combed.

He would look more intimidating if he wasn't a bit on the short side, and if he didn't have a considerably taller assistant.

Still, he walked with stride and confidence despite the fact the halls were flooding with students enjoying their term break. Under one arm he carried a roll of large, A3-sized papers.

"But one has to start somewhere. And while I, as the head of the disciplinary committee," the boy continued, putting his hands by his mouth as if to fake a parenthesis, "(self-appointed)", before taking them back down, "think it's of utmost importance that we work towards that higher goal."

He stopped by a relatively uninteresting wall before smacking up a poster, explaining the students a thing or two about tardiness. Namely, how absolutely intolerable it was. This was done by talking about how he, Akiyama Takeo, had used his time machine to travel to the future to see the fate of tardy high-schoolers, which culminated in an apocalypse that he barely escaped from, thus leading him to work hard to save mankind from that fate. "Scotch tape," he told his friend, gesturing with his head at the poster. "So, what do you think? It's probably my best poster yet."

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At last Tsuchi was truly able to say he had his back to the wall. The sight of his face staring back had nearly made him drop the clipboard he was holding, as his fingers fumbled. Doggedly, he held onto it as he attempted to come to grips with seeing himself on the poster. Some apocolaypse hooey with his head badly superimposed onto some action hero. With muscles.

He put his face close to his ear. It amazed him to see that he could actually look presentable, at least to other people. Here was the embarrassment he had been seeking - expecting - ever since he had come to this school.

"Oh, that's excellent," he said, almost crying out at his appearance. "I have to look forward to a lifetime of this, sir?"

"Indubitably, unless we can stop the climb of tardiness," Takeo said as he taped the poster, "there will be only the wailing of babes and the gnashing of teeth, the smell of gunpowder, and a whole lot of ripped denim. And while I very much enjoyed the romantic overtures from your future-self slash incredibly-muscular-leader-of-the-human-resistance, I have to prevent this future."

He snapped his fingers. Time to keep on walking.

"Besides, I can only hope that the principal will give us more funding if the disciplinary committee does a good job."

Tsuchi listened and nodded with each point made. He absorbed the information quietly, processed it at slow speed, and wasted no time leaving it there in the back of his mind turning round and round. In wondering what had possessed his friend to use such an idea, he had almost distanced himself from the conversation.

"Yeah," he said slowly. "And then you'll take his crown. I mean, these halls would be full of gremlins, but for you."

Asami picked up her speed and ran so fast that she could barely see the two boys talking. And, unlike both of them, she had a more liberal view of the hallway and any rules. There seemed to be a lot of space to share. Therefore, if she wanted to get away faster, she had to pick up her pace.

A short while later, she tunnelled forward like a tornado in a large encroaching way and hit the smaller one. Hard.

In a sudden violation of some laws of physics, Takeo's scream echoed in the air thrice-fold, even though he was, in body and soul, occupied making a discovery of unaided flight.

He flew in spiral in the air and landed, loudly, on the floor, among some students that didn't so much as bat an eyelash at this. They did the first and the second time, but this was not uncommon. This was the opposite thereof.

Slowly, he gained the power of speech again, in a growing rumble that went like: "Ohhhhh---" and ended up with him sitting up. "OUBAI!"

Tsuchi did not seem to appreciate this. He frowned and moved past Asami like a ghost. As one did to anyone in distress, he offered the other boy help off the floor. He thought that he looked quite so angry that it would be the last thing Asami would ever see in her life.

"You have to be more careful where you're going," he told her. "It's really quite dangerous!"

All of the words, including the ones about safety, seemed to come to Asami with such odd logic that she was quite unsure of how to use their advice. In fact, now that she thought about it, they had been standing in her way. Not against the walls or anything safe like that. The other boy, however, seemed to be sore. She felt a bit of concern.

But she did not wait to be shot down. She got in the first word, "Then watch it!"

It was a miracle. Some people even clapped: Takeo managed to get on his feet without a SINGLE sign that his rump was sore. Which it was. He would probably have to get some x-rays done.

But right now, the only rays he could think about were the heat rays that he was hoping would conveniently manifest from his eyes. He just held up both hands. "And what, pray tell, should I watch out for? This is a hallway, people are supposed to walk in the hallway. Not try out their hyperdrive."

"Oh," she said. A pause. One careful check. "I don't see speed signs here."

She looked at the poster, a little bemused. Her eyes turned musingly to the complainant - her mind was struggling to understand the black-haired boy's sense of humour.

"Oh well, we'll surely put up the speed signs once the traffic stops and all the cars clear the area. Oh, wait! There's no cars, and no need for speed signs. You know why?"

He reeled back, gathered his arms close to himself, ready to explode in a shout.

Instead, as he rose, as he finished the arching motion that brought his body up to his toes, with arms up high, he just said nothing, shrinking back to an elegant stance and folding his arms behind his back, disguising the fact he was rubbing his butt.

"I think I've made it clear that what I'm trying to say is: because you don't run on the halls. If I catch you running again, Oubai, I'll take disciplinary measures."

Then, to hide a squeal of pain, he shouted "UTAZAWAAAGH!!!" and, clearing his throat, used his head to point to his clipboard. "Take notes. Yes. Oubai Asami. First warning. I-- oh wow you have really nice calligraphy, I'd never noticed..."

Tsuchi listened and nodded at the compliment. He would have been too amused by the histrionics to do his job, otherwise. And he wrote the incident down. Now, he saw two possibilities. He could try to make Asami think of the disgrace and disappointment of the incident in question, or come across as really bitter and angry.

Which he did not do well.

He tenderly gave her a small smile, though when he spoke it was meant more for the other boy. "Just don't run so fast, yeah? You might knock him clear out the window."

Takeo simply stared at Asami, scowling deeply.

"Yes. Begone. You don't frighten me with your silly knees-bent-running-around-advancing behavior, so go away or I shall taunt you a second time."

Asami did not run. She paid no attention to the shorter boy, who needed to relax - or be defenestrated. But the other boy's words had seemed to make a difference. There was so much respect of authority and culture grained into her that she did not protest or insult, but left with a huff.

Tsuchi watched her leave, a little curious.

"Are you going to doodle another little picture as therapy, sir?"

Takeo waited until the girl was gone before straightening up a bit. While he did flinch lightly at some real pain, there was far less overacting involved.

"Yes, I might. Let's continue, those posters won't hang themselves..." he said, breathing deep. "I suppose this works better, anyway. She never listened to me when I first tried to explain why it was dangerous to run around. It is, admittedly, easier to put up the authority figure act and let you do the convincing than to do it myself. Maybe she's just too conditioned because of her brother."

Tsuchi started moving down the bottom of the wall, making sure the poster was glued and secure at the bottom.

He frowned. "Conditioned?"

"If you took Daisuke Oubai and broke him down to the simpler elements... you would probably have a disintegration gun, which I DO wish I had, but I digress. You would also reach a conclusion: at the simplest form, he's a generally decent fellow," Takeo said, with practically no expression on his face as he continued with the task of having Tsuchi do the actual manual labor. He was 'supervising.' "But he also takes himself, and his position as the rule-abiding Oubai, a bit seriously... which I imagine can be tiresome. See it's perfectly fine to take yourself seriously, just don't let others catch wind of that. It can be a nightmare to get them to listen to after that."

To Tsuchi's utter dismay, the view of the poster when he stood up was a picture of a lopsided display. This time he had to study it a moment longer, before going back down on his knees. Only his hair and a bit of his uniform showed, as he was raising his right hand to turn the right side down.

"Then I shouldn't take you seriously, by all accounts."

"I say it's better not to take anything seriously. You miss far too much that way, wouldn't you say?"

As was her wont, Mitsuya Araragi had apparently appeared from nowhere, leaning over the kneeling Utazawa to peer at the poster; her hair was just about long enough to brush his back. (Her uniform skirt was even longer, the crazy quilt of silk scraps that brought it nearly to her ankles no doubt being enough to give a more serious tyrant a heart attack.)

She turned to Takeo, beaming, her hands folded behind her back. "But by the look of this poster, it seems you don't need me to tell you that, Akihito-sama."

Takeo turned to the girl. "A verbal contender appears!" he announced, dull-faced but in dramatic tones, befitting a boxing match. "And she takes in a first strike with a misspelling of my name-- the crowd hoots, Akiyama slips back, but he pulls himself back up. We're on fire. What's going to happen next?"

He stepped over to help Tsuchi straighten the poster. "Good morning... Araragi-san, I believe," he said, absentmindedly.

"Why, I had thought you would appreciate the comparison to His Imperial Majesty," Mitsuya replied with a pout; whether she was genuinely put out by the failure of her attempted compliment or just teasing was a little hard to tell. She stepped back, at any rate, to allow the pair to work. "But I'm honored to have attracted your notice, at least."

A pause, as she examined the contents of the poster, properly this time. "Ah, so tardiness is the issue of the day, is it? I'd have thought you'd have greater battles to fight, but if the consequences are indeed so dire, I'll be sure to do my part as well."

"It's a matter of strategy," said Takeo, who didn't mind sharing some of his plans with people, provided the plans were so simple that he figured they would have them figured out anyway. "Tardiness is easy to catch, and a high success rate should impress Her Imperial Majesty, the Principal, so that from her lofty office will the resources for a new chair descent upon us, the disciplinary committee, given that the last one finally passed on to that place in the heavens for chairs that accommodated the past two generations of students."

"Ah," replied Mitsuya with a sage nod, "a grand plan, then. I would expect nothing less."

But club resources and battles over funding were something that did not terribly interest Mitsuya; she'd always tuned out those arguments from her occasional colleagues at the newspaper. It was all far too mundane for her. Posters bordered on that, too, when they weren't made by the mad geniuses of the disciplinary committee (she'd petitioned, unsuccessfully, to take up the responsibility of doing them for the newspaper; apparently they'd feared what the results might be).

"May Ryuseki's rising sun shine on your efforts, then."

And with that, she started to amble off to... god alone knew where. It certainly wasn't the direction of the third-year classrooms.

Mitsuya would barely have rounded a corner when Takuro and Itsuki entered the hallway from the other direction, uniforms still slimy from the worm attacks and additionally wet from their unsuccessful attempts to wash it off.

"It's not our fault, right?" Takuro was saying to Itsuki as they neared the two disciplinary committee members. "And it could be worse. At least it doesn't smell that bad..."

"It would've been at least considerate for those three jerks to drop enough money for the laundry," he mused. Since his father would have no advice for getting into fights. He thought of what his mother would suggest in a time like this. "Maybe we should've checked their pockets for more money..."

Itsuki was, in the grand scheme of things, an enemy of elegance. He was an antonym of it, and it just so happens that this effect worsened with moisture. His wet bangs were sticking to his forehead, and the rest was a heavy mess. He nodded in complicity to Takuro, noticing the disciplinarians in the distance, and shrinking down a little, as if to make his tall, gangly presence a bit less noticeable.

Meekly, he leaned closer to Takuro, to ask a question in secrecy, sounding more concerned than he should. "Oh-- um, big city schools don't have, like, old school discipline anymore, right?"

"Like beating students or something?" Takuro's eyes widened in surprise at the question before his expression shifted to unconcerned ease. "I doubt it. The principle keeps going on about embracing the future." He grinned. "Maybe you'll get to be an exception."

Only then did he glance ahead at what had made Itsuki hunch. "I don't want to talk to monitors now," he sighed, dragging a hand through his wet, messy hair. "We don't look that bad, right? And they look busy..." As they got closer, Takuro casually avoided eye contact with either of the disciplinary committee members.

Itsuki's eyes went wide as platters, and comical, if childish alarm filled his face. Then he scowled, almost in a pout, "T-that's not funny..." he protested meekly, but followed along, trying to look as non-chalant as Takuro did. Trying being the keyword.

It was almost a successful move. Takuro and Itsuki were walking by just as Takeo had his head down on the clipboard, revising some matter of grave importance that he would not look up.

But then a moment in, he looked up. "I feel a presence... I presence I didn't feel since--" he paused, breathed as you would if you were a man in a black, artificial breathing helmet, and then snapped his fingers. "First class term-- Iwasaki. Kudou."

"Top marks, Disciplinary-kun," Takuro said cheerfully, having stopped after being addressed by name. "And kind of creepy."

He shot a glance at Itsuki, unable to decide between making conversation or bolting.

"You were absent from the first class this morning, and..." Takeo paused, looking Takuro over, from head to toe and up again. "It seems like you took the opportunity to run through some sprinklers, or go swimming." His keen eye, hawk-like in his sharpness, wouldn't miss a detail. "In a rather... viscous pool at that."

Itsuki, rapidly boiling with anxiety, broke into a nervous laugh. "Oh, um, Takuro and I fell into a frog nest."

"Frogs don't have nests," Takeo supplied.

"We know! That made it even more surprising. Imagine that, gosh!"

"Don't worry, we'll avoid falling into it again," Takuro added, already tugging at Itsuki's sleeve. "It took us such a long time to get out, and we wouldn't want to miss more class, would we, Itsuki-kun?"

"We'll leave you two to your-" he glanced at the poster on the wall, "-your important announcements."

"What? AH-oh, yes, Takuro and I are really... class-types sort of people, reckon if we stick around we'll just bore you talkin' bout how much we love to be on time," he blabbered, smiling as he took a few steps back. "Come on, mister President, let's go--"

"TWO HOURS DETENTION!" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BbRffBCeYw) Takeo shouted before they could get out of earshot.

That stopped Takuro dead in his tracks. He spun on his heel to turn back to this disciplinary committee members.

"What for?" he called back, the effect of the irritated folding of his arms and impatient tapping of his foot hampered by the water dripping from his wet hair.

"Terrible uniform etiquette, trying to avoid school discipline, being tardy, and threatening the reproductive cycle of frogs, which as you know," he briefly looked at Tsuchi, "are more endangered than you'd think. Did you know that frog population is dropping?" He paused to look back at Takuro. "You should honestly think twice before trying to go over my head, Iwasaki-san... A hard feat, already, when you're heavier from all the water on you."

The argument was coming down harder now. Tsuchi stood back from the poster and thought about it. He did not care for the other boy's state or attitude. He thought it was better that he got to learn. Would he be this dismissive at work or something? So he stayed silent, except for:

"I feel it's kind of inconsiderate to make this mess and expect people to clean up after you, really." Only Takeo's presence stopped him adding 'sorry' at the end of that statement.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Takuro simpered, sarcasm almost physically dripping from his tone. "Next time I'm filled with an overwhelming urge to fall into a hole, the mere thought of getting water in the school's hallways will carry me to safety, I'm sure."

In an uncharacteristically ill temper, he strode off.

"O-oh my..." Itsuki said, following after Takuro in a more sheepish, crestfallen way.

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Nightmare!! The march of the hallway demon lords!

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