A nasty surprise

Breakfast is a bit less relaxing than usual.

The day before you’d left your mother in the belief that you were just going to hang out with the guys, when you told her that you wouldn’t be there for dinner. But then Kate had to casually ask if you and Elizabeth had a nice time, and make you the focus of attention during breakfast.

Your mother isn’t the type to outright pry. In all other circumstance she’d just be showing polite interest in her sons romantic prospects. And in most other circumstances you’d be happy to tell her. But when she asks how the two of you met, you suddenly realize that the (mostly) honest answer is “I found her unconscious on a bench.” and would come with a lot of follow-up questions.

Not a big crisis overall, since you say something vague about running into her by chance and hitting it off. But it primes you to spend the rest of breakfast looking for other potential pitfalls, which makes the whole talk tenser than it could have been.

But, you muse as you make your way to class, it is a good reminder, that you should come up with cover-stories for any times you spend shifting reality, beforehand.

Or get used to habitually dissolving suspicions with “Would you rather…..”.

And speaking of clandestine activities: Terras report shows VIPER-business is ticking along without a hitch. And with your first visit to Liz house distracting you, you haven’t made any real progress on who to room with. But then there really is no need to hurry, so who cares?

Your plan to settle in for another day of classes, and hold an eye out for potential roommates, is interrupted when some guy comes up to you as you make your way to class “Hey, errr Dean Waylon asked me to fetch you. Apparently there has been some kind of complaint or irregularity…... point is: she wants to talk to you. ”

A complaint?

That doesn’t sound good.

You had tried to be careful, but if you’d learnt anything over the past few days then that it was hard to think of everything.

Which is why you made sure the dean and most of the senior faculty are all unwitting sleeper-agents of VIPER, so as long as you acted quickly the problem shouldn’t be TOO hard to resolve.

Sadly the TA they sent to fetch you, isn’t much help narrowing it down. He was just told to fetch you, so you are left wondering what could have gone wrong as you follow him towards the administrative wing.

There are about a dozen ways things might have gone wrong, now that you retrace your steps the last few days. And things are about to go wrong once more, because you are too preoccupied with your thoughts to realize this isn’t the way to the deans office until someone seizes you from behind and drags you through a door. Something hits the back of your knee, and as your legs buckles strong hands push you to the floor. You lie there, gasping in confusion at the masked figures standing above you, nearly chocking as one of them squirts some sugary fluid from a bottle into your mouth before pinching your nose shut.

As you feel the liquid filling your mouth you try to fight back, but they refuse to let you spit out the sweet stuff and there isn’t much you can do to fight off the three to five guys pinning you to the floor.

What follows is a blur of increasingly frantic struggling, someone hissing into your ear to “Fucking swallow already”, people hissing at each other to “This was a mistake” “Shut up.” “What if someone sees us?” “It’s hazing. We are just hazing him.” and the ever increasing fear that you are going to suffocate in some random bathroom. At some point you must have swallowed the stuff, because you take big gulping breaths of air and then….

…. you are lying down. Is it night already? Why is it dark? Why does your head feel like it is about to explode? You turn around trying to shut out your pounding head and the world around you....

….who’s shouting? Don’t they realize you are trying to sleep here? Freaking jerks!.....

…..

*SLAP*

Ouch.

*SLAP*

Someone is hitting you.

Probably with a hammer, the way your head is ringing.

And there is a Supernova going of right in front of your eyes.

You groan and weakly raise an arm to stop the next blow, but somehow you can get your arm to work right. You try blearily to figure out what is happening.

Memories come flooding in quick succession. going to class. Being called to the dean and getting mugged. The feeling of your burring lungs as you tried to fight them off. The sweet release as you could finally breath again.

And now…. now someone is shining a flashlight in your face and shouting something. The bright light and noise doing their best to drive your pounding headache to ever greater heights. And the reason you can’t move your arm is because something is holding them.

To your great relief the light disappears from your eyes after a while, and after blinking several times the spots in your vision recede far enough for you to make out a figure holding a flashlight and the dim outlines of a room. Raising your head to see what the figure is looking at, you can make out a metal door set into bare concrete walls, before the motion setts off a a wave of dizzyness and you let your ehad sink back. The motion attracts the attention of the flashlight bearer and the blinding light returns to your face.

*Slap*

“No! Don’t go back to sleep. You have to call them off!”

“Whurrgh!” you manage to croak through a dry throat, but apparently the figure understood you regardless because the light disappears again.

“Look. I’m sorry! Ok?! Just call them off!”

And now the guy (Is it a guy? You are pretty sure the voice belongs to a guy) is shaking you.

“Wh’t?” you manage to croak

The guy drags you up by your collar, pointing towards the door with the arm holding the flashlight “Tell your friends to stop or….”

The rest of the sentence is cut of in a startled scream, as the door springs open with a protesting groan to reveal a snarling demon backlit from the light outside. Glowing red eyes and all.

The snarl rises to an angry howl as the creature hurtles across the room to slam into the other guy with bone crunching force. Probably literally, because a dry cracking sound can be heard over the panicked screams of its victims. Or it might have been your elbow, as it hit the concrete floor during your clumsy attempt to brace yourself as the thing holding you upright is suddenly gone. The rope binding your hands together might also have played a role in all that.

The flashlight goes spinning across the room while you hold your elbow and wait for the pain to subside, so you only get short flashes of the short struggle going on a few metres away from you. And the second demon hurrying towards you.

Well not a demon precisely. On second glance both are white-haired women with fangs and red eyes and what you mistook for horns are actual ears. Relief floods through you as you realize they are … what did Kate call them?..the Hounds something…. No matter! They are friends.

Your own sense of relief is mirrored on the dog-girls face, as soft fingers examine your head and neck and find no major wounds. Her head snaps up “You idot! you almost gave him a concussion!” she barks at the other girl, crouching over her victim, before looking back to you her expression softening instantly. “It’s ok. we’re here now master.” she assures you as she cradles you in her arms.

“Does he need CPR?” the other girl asks, with a hopeful undertone.

“No he doesn’t. “ your caretaker declares firmly ” Now put that guy with the others. And give him a swift kick for me.”

“Will do.” the other acknowledges her ears flatteing a bit as she puts her arms under the groaning guys armpits and drags him non to gently towards the door.

Once the guy and her sister(?) are gone the one cradling you relaxes visibly. “Sorry. She’s an idiot sometimes. Are you hurt?”

Are you? The pain in your elbow is already starting to subside. And giving it aan experimental wiggle it feels sore, but you don’t feel things scraping against each other or whatever a broken elbow would feel like. So that’s good. One worry down. Which leaves: “Th’rsty.” you croak.

“We’ll get you something to drink as soon as possible.” she assures you “Anything else?”.

“Aspr’in?”

She nods and pulls a smartphone from her pocket. you shake her head when she inquires ”Anything else?” and after typing for a bit she lays the phone down “I’ve told Mistress you are safe. And told the other to get you something to drink. ” she explains “Everything is going to turn out fine, now.” she has started to lightly stroke your head as she looks down at you with obvious concern. “Just take it easy master. ”

That seems like good advice. And there are worse situation s for ordering your thoughts than resting your head on a pretty girls thighs while she fusses over you. There are voices coming from a bit away, but you can’t make out what they are saying. So you busy yourself idly studying your rescuer. she looks pretty professional, with a black vest over a dark red button-up shirt. If it weren’t for the obviously inhuman features she’d probably fit right in at some FBI drama or something. It is quite a different look from the lingerie-clad selfie you saw that was your only previous exposure to the hounds. You like it.

“Sooo” you ask after a while “which are you?”

“I’m Ako.”

So they go by different names while transformed? Interesting.

“No, I mean. y’r your norm’l name?”

“That’s not how it works silly. ” she explains with a giggle “Right now I am just A-Ko. Because I turned first. Otherwise I’d be B-Ko, Or C-Ko. But this time I’m A-Ko because I wanted to help you the most when your sister explained what happened, ” she explains with a hint of pride in her voice “ so I transformed first. ”

“That was.. v’ry nice ‘f you.”

“Thank you.” she fidgets excitedly at the praise.

You smile up at her “I’ll try t’ make it up t’ y’ after th’s.” you promise. “Speaking of: What happ’n’d?”

“Hmm. I don’t know either. Mistress called us, and said nobody had seen you the entire day and that she’d found your phone under some bushes. And that you didn’t appear on any security cameras, either.. And that she wanted us to look for you because the contract makes us really good at tracking people down.”

Heh, of course it did. Leave it to Kate to make sure she got useful underlings as well as revenge out of the opportunity to forge a magical contract.

“Huh? What’s so funny?” A-ko asks, cocking her head cutely to the side.

“Nothing. Glad y’ are here.”

“I’m glad to be here to.” she declares with a fond little smile. “Your hair is really soft.”

A statement that is sure to make whoever A-ko used to be cringe when they turn back. In other circumstances you might give into the temptation to wring a bit more pending embarrassment out of this situation, but they DID just safe you. Also, you really want to know what’s going on.

So instead of inviting further flirtation you prompt “So. What next?”