Chapter Text
The halls were, as per usual, obsessively clean when Theta arrived.
Even though the students of the Academy were meant to be on break, the staff went nowhere, and many students stuck around through the holiday. Theta wasn’t entirely sure which of his friends fell into that category—Ushas had gone over it at the last meeting before their departure but he failed to listen, as his mind was already on the holiday—but it didn’t take more than two seconds of looking at Mortimus to realize that he was one of them.
Theta only knocked on his door because no one else had answered, and he was hoping that Magnus would be around. Luckily for Mortimus, he wasn’t, because the room was in a complete state of dishevelment. Not just Mortimus’s side of the room either; no, his horrible mess had spread onto both sides of the room and was taking over the entirety of the floor.
Mortimus himself resembled the area around him, his deep brown eyes wide and bloodshot when he opened the door. His greasy hair was a tangled mess as well, and somewhat longer than Theta remembered it. Instead of lacking style, it was parted down the middle, and flopped slightly over the sides of his ears. It had grown longer in the back as well, contradicting Mortimus’s previous declaration that he couldn’t stand things touching his neck.
“Uh, Mort?” The concern was not light in Theta’s tone. “Are you, like, high or something?”
Mortimus shook his head and grabbed onto Theta’s forearm before pulling him into the room. He slammed the door shut, glanced out of the peephole, then took a step back and breathed a sigh of relief. “Sorry about that,” he said. “It has been a wild week.”
“Yeah, I can see that.” He gestured around the room. “Are you planning on cleaning this up? Because Magnus is due to be back any minute now and if you don’t get that stuff off of his floor, he’ll—”
“Blah, blah, blah. You think I don’t know? I can’t clean it up, Theta. He’ll fire me if I clean it up.”
Theta made a face. “Who’ll fire you?”
“Jeff.” He sounded so sincere in his words that it was impossible to decipher whether he was pulling a prank.
“Who the hell is Jeff?”
Mortimus stared at him for a second, then turned around and paced over to his bed. Garbage cracked beneath his feet, but he paid no attention to it. He grabbed a stuffed animal off his bed, then turned around and showed it to Theta, a deadly serious look on his face.
“This is Jeff,” he answered.
Theta stared at the toy for several seconds. From his perspective, he was staring at an absolutely harmless toy.
“That’s a stuffed yaddlefish,” Theta said slowly.
“Well, fuck you too. This is not a stuffed animal, Thete. This is Jeff. Jeff is my supervisor. Don’t be rude to Jeff.”
“Why not?”
“Didn’t you hear me before?” Mortimus snapped. “He’ll fire me, you dumbass.”
The conversation went from weird to full-blown insane in a matter of minutes. Theta was almost concerned about Mortimus and feared that he may have been right in asking about drugs. Something about him was just severely off from normal, and he seemed to be completely unaware of his bizarre behavior. That was why, no matter how odd it was, Theta was determined to help Mortimus.
It wouldn’t be until several hours later when he would come to regret his decision.
//
“This is my heart. My soul. My life force. It is everything good and pure in the world, distilled into a cup destined to never be as incredible as the liquid inside of it. It—”
“—kinda tastes like sludge,” Rallon finished. He put the coffee cup down onto the table and made a face.
Rallon wasn’t entirely sure how or why they had started talking about coffee, but ever since he walked into his dorm that morning, he couldn’t get the smell to go away. Every time it started to disperse, Vansell brewed up a fresh cup, and the room filled with the scent all over again. It wasn’t too bothersome, as it smelled all right, but it tasted downright terrible, as he had learned after being force-fed a mug full of it.
“Yes, but it’s caffeinated sludge.” Unlike his roommate, Vansell pulled his mug closer and took another sip of the steaming hot drink. “I’m almost ashamed to live in the same room as someone who doesn’t appreciate this holy water.”
“Did you just literally call coffee ‘holy water’?” If it was possible, the expression on his face got even stranger.
“Obviously. There is no better drink on this planet, Rallon, and it pains me that you cannot see that. How do you even survive without the treasure that is caffeine?”
“I drink soda.”
Vansell looked appalled. “You would rather drink a fizzy bottle of piss than a freshly brewed cup of coffee?”
“To be fair, I usually drink it out of cans.”
Rallon was more than a little bit relieved that someone knocked on the door before Vansell had a chance to respond. For some reason, he seemed utterly obsessed with the stupid drink, and he couldn’t just accept the fact that they had differing opinions on the sludge.
He leapt out of his seat to open the door and broke into a huge grin when he opened it to find Millennia standing on the other side. She reached up and hugged him before he had a chance to do so first, and they held onto each other tightly for a few seconds before she pulled away.
“Hi!” she beamed. She opened her mouth to say something else, then stopped and furrowed her brow. She tilted her nose upward and sniffed a few times before turning back to Rallon. “What’s that smell?”
“That would be the sweet scent of holy water, according to Vansell.” Rallon turned around and gave him a look. “Otherwise known as: he’s had seven cups of coffee since I got back this morning.”
Millennia frowned. “Ever since I’ve known you,” she said, turning to face to Vansell, “you’ve liked coffee. But you’ve never had that much of it before. I don’t think that’s healthy.”
“I don’t really care.”
“Well, I do.” She took a step into the room. “I don’t know what you did over break, but I’m worried you may have come to rely on coffee a bit too much. Why don’t you stop drinking it for a day? Just to see what your life would be like without it?”
“That is a terrible idea.” Vansell rolled his eyes. “But since I haven’t anything better to do, I’ll stop for the day. Just to humor you. Coffee comes back tomorrow, though.”
“Unless you come to realize that you can function without it.”
“That’s never going to happen, Mil, but good try.”
Rallon stepped between their staring contest and went over to grab the coffee mugs. He took them into the sink and dumped them out, then started scrubbing to get rid of the coffee smell that had plagued their room for the last… however long they had been there.
//
Koschei was both pleased and not pleased to be back at the Academy. He was quite happy to see his friends again, but at the same time, he dreaded returning to his classes. If he didn’t know any better, he might have said that his teachers were out to get him, not to mention the many peers that were jealous of him (specifically his excellent dorm room, but he neglected to share that piece of information). In a similar situation of being both pleased and unamused, the first person he saw upon walking up the stairs into the Academy was none other than Ushas.
She sighed when he opened the door for her. “Hello, Koschei,” she said, not bothering to look at him as she strode past.
“Hey there.” Koschei followed her in and let the door close behind him. “It’s good to see you. I barely survived without your optimism this past week.”
“And yet I was perfectly fine without your sarcasm.” They walked through the dark red halls for around a minute before Ushas looked over and saw the thoughtful expression on Koschei’s face. “What? What are you thinking about?”
“Oh, you know. Stuff. Mostly how I’m going to take over the world.”
Ushas rolled her eyes and pushed a lock of long brown hair out of her face. “You are going to be the absolute death of me, Koschei.”
“I’ll swear on that.”
Koschei opened his mouth to continue but cut himself off when he spotted Millennia running down the hall towards them. She pulled Ushas into a hug and started babbling about all the things she did over break, and how much she missed her roommate, which quickly bored Koschei. Ushas looked more than ready to escape from the embrace, so he decided to shoot her a joking glance before continuing off down the hallway. She glared back at him.
While he walked down the hallway, Koschei whipped out his phone and sent a quick message to Theta, to ask whether he was back or not, but he failed to respond. For a split second, he considered going to look for him, but got sidetracked when he saw Epsilon slip on a fruit peel and fall flat on his back. He snorted, and watched as Epsilon stood up, shouting that the prank stopped being funny the first time he came back from break.
Even though he hated his classes, Koschei had to admit that it felt pretty good to be back.
//
“Hey.”
Jelpax looked up when he heard the door open. He smiled at Drax, who failed return the expression. Instead, he waved lamely, then dragged a hand through his hair and dropped his suitcase by the door. He turned to walk over to his side of the room, but Jelpax stopped him. “Why are you acting weird?”
Drax turned around, his brow furrowed. “I’m not acting weird,” he said. “All I did was walk into the room. How is that acting weird?”
“You didn’t say anything, you didn’t smile when you saw me, and you didn’t try to give me a hug.”
“Yeah, so?” He shrugged and walked over to his closet. He reached in to find a black sweatshirt and pulled it over his head, further messing up his hair in the process. “Maybe I’ve just decided to actually respect your personal space for once. I know that you don’t like hugs, Pax, and I’ve decided to stop being a dick about it.”
“You’ve never been a dick about anything.”
He rolled his eyes. “I’m obviously an asshole. Just not to you.”
“I don’t like how seriously you said that.” Jelpax dropped his book onto the blanket beside him and turned to face Drax, who was still turned away from him by his closet. He appeared to be searching for something, but it was unclear what. “Drax, seriously. What’s going on?”
“Nothing. Have you seen my glasses? I can’t fucking see.”
“Stop looking for a second and come over here.” There was the longest hesitation before Drax walked over and stopped in front of his bed. “Why are you acting like this?”
Again, he didn’t respond right away, and stood there in silence. He blinked several times before he finally spoke, at which point Jelpax knew for sure that something was wrong. Blinking was both an indication of tears, and one of Drax’s most notable nervous habits.
He almost wanted to push his friend for a faster answer but knew that Drax would resort to a sarcastic comeback and refuse to give a serious answer if he rushed him. So instead, he waited. It wasn’t worth it.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
With that one sentence, he bit his lip and turned away to resume looking for whatever he wanted. Jelpax nearly called after him to get him to talk again but stopped when his phone chimed on the table beside him. He reached over to grab it and frowned when he read the message on the screen.
MAGNUS: Who are the bitches who were messing with your bf?
For once, he didn’t even feel the need to comment on Magnus’s subtle insult/joke/thing-he-would-never-understand. Instead, he wanted to know the same thing that Magnus asked him. What was he even talking about? He opened his mouth to say something to Drax, but stopped himself, knowing that his friend was unlikely to answer any questions, especially coming from Magnus.
ME: What are you talking about?
He absolutely hated the fact that it took Magnus more than a minute to respond.
MAGNUS: Two dudes were poking fun at him when he got back this morning.
MAGNUS: Looked like one of them might have hit him? I only saw the tail end of it.
MAGNUS: I was going deck them, but they hauled ass when I started walking over.
Jelpax was both worried about and pleased by his clear concern for Drax’s wellbeing, and in any other situation, he might have smiled to himself. Despite the topic, it felt good to have a conversation with Magnus in which they actually agreed on something.
ME: I’ll talk to Drax.
ME: But seriously, don’t hold back if you see those blokes again. Your anger might actually be useful for once.
In response, all Magnus sent as a thumbs-up emoticon. Jelpax turned his screen off and tossed his phone onto the bed beside him, then shifted to see where Drax had gone, and froze when he realized that he wasn’t in sight. He stood up anyway, and quickly spotted his friend leaning against the side of his own bed on the other side of the room. Jelpax walked over and sat down beside him before he spoke.
“Are you okay?”
“I can’t find my glasses,” he mumbled. His knees were pulled up to his chest, his arms crossed atop them. “And I’m fucking farsighted so I can’t see what the fuck I’m looking at.”
“That’s not what this is about, is it?”
“Why do you know me so well?”
“Because Magnus messaged me and told me that he saw some blokes picking on you.” Jelpax sighed and gave him a look. “But also, because we’ve been friends forever and I’d be stupid to not recognize your behavioral patterns by now.”
He nodded. “I both hate you and appreciate you very much. It’s kinda stupid having a best friend, isn’t it?”
“If something can be stupid in a good way, then yeah. Yeah, it is.”
//
“Jeff is not a yaddlefish, Thete,” Mortimus spat. “He is a person, and he doesn’t like you referring to him that way.”
Theta groaned. The funny situation had long since escalated into a disaster, and he was beginning to fear for his friend’s safety. Mortimus wasn’t just acting weird, like he usually did, but almost as if he had lost his mind completely. Drugs had been ruled out of the equation, after Theta looked up the symptoms and realized that Mortimus was both too aware and too far gone to be on any substance available on Gallifrey. But something, somehow, had still caused him to go mad.
“I don’t care, Mort,” Theta groaned. “You need to clean up this mess right now or Magnus is literally going to kill you. I’m not even joking. You know what he gets like when he’s angry.”
Mortimus shrugged. “It’s fine, he can’t kill me. Jeff won’t let him. Jeff prefers to be the only one in charge of my survival.”
“For the last time, Jeff isn’t real! He’s a stuffed yaddlefish! Where the hell did you even get a stuffed yaddlefish? Never mind. Just stop acting like this is all somehow going to be okay. Because it’s not. On any normal week, you might have gotten away with this, but not right after vacation. Magnus is going to want to come in here and sit down and relax and he can’t do that if your shit is all over his bed!”
“My—” He looked almost surprised when he turned and saw the piles of stuff on Magnus’s side of the room. “Huh. Who put that there?”
“You did, unless you’ve had a visitor over while I was gone, which I highly doubt. There is not one person in this Academy who would walk into someone else’s room and make a mess like this. It just wouldn’t happen.”
“No, yeah, I agree.” Mortimus rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly and took a look around the light orange room. “Maybe it was Lester?”
“Who’s Lester?”
He glanced around again, as if he were looking for something. “My coworker. He was here before, but— huh. I guess Jeff must have killed him.”
Theta swallowed hard. He had never been great with horror stories—he had been terrified for months after his mum told him about Grandfather Paradox—and even the imaginary idea that someone had died inside of Mortimus’s room was absolutely horrifying. He took a deep breath and reminded himself not to panic. It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not real.
“It is real.”
“Oh my—how did you know what I was thinking?!”
“I’m a Universal Psychology major. It’s my job to know what you’re thinking.” The manner in which he spoke felt more normal compared to usual, and Theta hoped that it meant he was starting to calm down. However, Mortimus’s next choice of words sincerely scared him. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to work.”
“I don’t want to ask this,” Theta began, “but what kind of work is Jeff making you do?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know for sure, but I think he’s trying to take over the world.”
Theta didn’t get a chance to respond before the door opened and Magnus walked in. It took about two seconds for his jaw to drop, and four seconds for him to rush at Mortimus with his fist; an enraged expression in his eyes.
//
“Hey, Vansell, you’re shaking.”
He whipped around to look at Koschei. “You think I don’t know that? I know that. I’m freaking out right now, mate. I haven’t had coffee in like an hour and I think I’m starting to slow down. Please, someone, tell Millennia to take back what she said.”
“Why do you want her to take back what she said?” asked Ushas. “Can’t you just stop with this challenge thing?”
“No, because that’s a forfeit. It doesn’t count if she retracts the challenge.”
After Ushas had managed to get Millennia to let go of her, her and Koschei resumed their walk down the hall. At some point along the way, they ran into Rallon and Vansell, who were going on a walk around the dorms to “clear their minds”, according to Rallon. Ushas was skeptical of what they meant, and asked questions until they told her what they were going on about, at which point she criticized the entire challenge. She wasn’t a fan of coffee, and wasn’t defending his decision, but failed to understand why exactly he was so reluctant to give up on the stupid thing.
“Who cares about a forfeit?” asked Ushas. “It’s not like it’s a real competition or anything. And Millennia is the one who started it, so you’re seriously unlikely to get any kind of backtalk if you decide to drop it. In fact, if you wanted to, you could just drink the coffee in a travel cup. She’d never know what you have. For all she knows, you’re having water. She’s very trustworthy, so you could tell her it’s anything. Warm milk, even.”
Vansell snorted. “Am I tricking her or coming out of the closet?”
“Are you insinuating that warm milk is homosexual?”
“Are you capable of using shorter words?” asked Koschei.
Ushas reached around and slapped him across the shoulder. “Anyway, do you guys know where the others are? I haven’t seen them around yet.”
“Theta’s not answering me, and I haven’t bothered to try to reach anyone else yet. It’s getting late now, though, so they’re probably all back. I just don’t know where they are.”
“You want to go look for them?” Rallon piped up.
He shook his head. “Nah. They’ll show up before tomorrow.” Koschei jokingly placed an arm around Ushas’s shoulders. “Plus, who needs them? I’ve got this beautiful ray of sunshine right here.”
“Why are you like this?” Ushas slithered out of his grasp and slapped him again. He made a fake sad face and retreated into his own personal bubble, while Vansell groaned beside them.
“Well, if you two are going to start arguing again, then I’m going to go ahead and scoot out of here. Rallon, come on,” he said. He stood up and gestured for his roommate to follow him. “I need some coffee and I need your stupid travel mug to hide it in. One of these days I really ought to get my own.”
“Yeah, you really, really ought to.” Rallon sighed and followed him as he took off down the hallway.
Once they were out of range, Koschei turned back to face Ushas. “You want another hug now?” he asked.
“You are literally intolerable.”
He smiled. “That’s why you love me.”
//
Theta was beginning to question whether or not he was going to make it out of Mortimus’s room. He’d doubted his survival from the moment Mortimus started acting so strange, and it only got worse when Magnus came into the room. His rage seemed almost worse than usual, which made Theta wonder if everyone else’s dominant personality traits had been amplified. Otherwise, Magnus hated messes—and Mortimus—far more than he knew. Luckily, Mortimus’s natural ability to talk people down came in handy, and he stopped Magnus before he got decked in the face.
“…no, I don’t want to hear your bullshit excuses about Jeff or whoever else, Mortimus.” Although he was good, Mortimus was no wizard, and Magnus’s temper continued to boil. “I want to know exactly what the fuck led you to destroying my room.”
“I can’t tell you if you don’t believe me.” He sighed and sat down on his bed, a pile of paper crunching beneath him when he did so. “It all started when I was cleaning out my closet, and underneath a pile of clothes and an undetermined substance, I found Jeff. I forgot that I even had him, honestly. It brought back old memories of fishing for yaddlefish with my dad. I used to love yaddlefish. Yaddlefish are wonderful. I always wanted a pet yaddlefish. Have you ever—”
“For the love of god, Mort, you need to stop talking.”
“Sorry. I just— I babble sometimes. I don’t know why. A nervous habit? I’m not really that nervous though. This is strange. Do you think this is strange? I’m confused. What’s going on?”
“Jesus Christ. Shut up!” Magnus slapped him over the head, and he winced and rubbed his jaw. Theta considered telling him off but thought better of the idea. “Listen to me for a second. I’m pretty sure I know why you’re acting so strange. That unknown substance on your dirty-ass pile of clothes was probably some kind of disgusting mold. If you ever paid attention in biology, you’d know that some of that stuff just goes straight into your brain. It’s worse than weed.”
“I kind of remember that,” said Theta. “I think that was the day I didn’t learn anything because Koschei was making jokes about getting high the whole hour. That was a brilliant class.”
Mortimus ignored him. “If you’re suggesting that I clean my entire room in an attempt to get rid of the mold or whatever you think is in there, you’ve lost your mind. After that horrible experience you forced me through the last time, I am never going to clean my room again. I might pick up something every now and then, but to stop and disinfect the entire dorm again? It’s not happening.”
“Why are you starting to make sense again?” Magnus narrowed his eyes and took a step closer to his roommate. “Not that I agree with you—you need to clean up my side of the room or I’ll kick your ass—but you’re not talking like you’ve literally lost your mind anymore. Did the smell finally get out of your head?”
“I don’t know. I mean, I don’t think so. I kind of just feel the same. I told you that I wasn’t high.”
“I’m still not buying it. Theta!”
Theta, who was halfway out the door, groaned and looked up when he turned around. “Yeah?”
“Take him to the infirmary,” he demanded. “I want to know that he’s definitely not on drugs or high on fungus before I deck him for lying to me.”
“Wait, no. I don’t want to go to the infirmary. Thete!”
Though he was not the least bit interested in going there either, Theta grabbed Mortimus by the upper arm and dragged him out of the room. He learned a long time ago not to disobey Magnus’s orders. Especially not when the punishment could be cleaning up his side of the room.
//
Jelpax had known Drax since their earliest days at primary school.
At first, they didn’t get along so well. They had some very obviously differing opinions, and vastly opposite upbringings, which prevented them from having civil discussions for the longest time. But as they grew, they got to know each other. They came to care about one another without even realizing it. Once, when they were around twenty years old, they got into a fight. As an apology, Jelpax gave Drax a stuffed version of his favorite animal—the striped pig bear.
For some odd reason, Drax still had that striped pig bear.
It was useful, to say the least. It took Jelpax a long time to figure out why Drax sometimes held onto it, but when he did, he understood. As long as he had known him, Drax had a problem with what he thought were nervous tics. For years he had been convinced that the uncomfortable tapping and rapid blinking were a sign of clinical anxiety, but he could never bring himself to talk to his friend about it. Jelpax told himself that he would do something if it ever got really bad, but for the most part, Drax seemed to have it under control.
Sometimes, when he was lying in bed, or working on his homework, Jelpax would catch him holding onto that striped pig bear. It took many sessions of subtle observation for him to realize that he did it as a substitute to his tics. There was always a pattern to what he would do to it; such as stroking its ears or dragging his nails along its soft tummy. It seemed almost comforting to him, and he worked far quieter and more attentively when he had it near him. That said, Jelpax had never been able to figure out the pattern of when he slept with it in his arms.
Regardless, Jelpax knew that something was wrong every time Drax held onto it.
He hadn’t wanted to leave earlier, especially since he had yet to get an answer from Drax about the people who had hurt him, but he had an appointment with his history professor that he couldn’t miss. He rushed through it, of course, wanting to get back to his friend as soon as possible, but it still took several minutes. When he got back, Drax had moved from his place on the floor and was lying on his bed with his striped pig bear in hand, holding it tight to his chest. He put it down when he heard Jelpax enter the room.
Drax rolled over onto his back and pushed himself up in his seat, then propped himself up against his pillows.
“Are you willing to talk now?” asked Jelpax. He made sure that his tone didn’t sound annoyed in the least when he spoke, so as not to hurt Drax’s feelings or annoy him further.
He shrugged. “Are you willing to sit far away from me? Because I can’t see up close for shit right now.”
“Do you seriously not know what you did with your glasses?”
“I don’t know. They’re here somewhere, because I didn’t take them to my dad’s house.” The fact that he said “dad’s” instead of “parents’” was slightly alarming to Jelpax, but he didn’t comment on it. “I wore my contacts all week, so I didn’t need them.”
“Why can’t you just wear your contacts now?” he asked.
Drax hesitated. “I actually did forget to pack those.”
“How?”
“I was kind of in a hurry to leave.”
It was one of the comments that Jelpax was desperate for him to elaborate on, but there was nothing he could do about it. Ever since he had known him, Drax had been reluctant to talk about his family, and still avoided as many questions as possible. It was only through offhand comments such as that that Jelpax knew anything about his family at all. He only wished he could get him to open up more.
Suddenly, something clicked in his mind. “The blokes who were messing with you earlier,” he began, “who were they?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Because they’re family, yeah?”
The air fell silent for the longest time before he spoke. “I really hate that you’re so perceptive,” he mumbled. Jelpax only shrugged in response. “They’re my cousins. Mum’s side. We don’t really get along so well. They— sorry. I’m— sorry.”
Drax stopped talking and blinked several times before he eventually resumed. Jelpax nearly asked if he was okay but felt that he already knew that answer and chose not to. Instead, he waited for Drax to go on, hoping he would elaborate more on the situation. He didn’t.
“Sorry, I’m fucking dizzy as shit. I can’t— my eyes won’t fucking focus.”
Before Jelpax could come up with a response that was both comforting and kept them focused on the original topic, someone knocked on their door. He stood up to answer it and froze when he saw Magnus on the other side of the door. Despite his earlier messages, Jelpax highly doubted that he was coming over to be friendly, and he wasn’t in the mood to argue. However, Magnus didn’t appear to be angry—at least, not at Jelpax—and the box in his hands made it clear that he was there for other reasons.
“Hey,” he said. “Apparently Mortimus is a kleptomaniac now, so I’m trying to return all of the shit that he stole.” He reached into the box and pulled out two notebooks, three random objects, and a glasses case. He held them out to Jelpax, who took them awkwardly.
“Thanks?” He was grateful for the return of Drax’s glasses, but unsure of how to react to the news that Mortimus had stolen them. “I suppose we’ll be locking our door from now on.”
Magnus made a face. “Yeah and watch your bags too. One of those is Drax’s lock picking kit.” He nodded towards the pile of stuff he gave to Jelpax. “Anyway, I’ll be going now. I’ve still got a lot of other things to return. Also, expect another visit, because this is just the stuff I found while shoving his shit off of my bed. We still have his side to go through.”
Jelpax didn’t say anything as he watched him go. He closed the door, then turned back around to Drax, who hadn’t moved an inch. He tapped his left pointer and middle fingers against his leg anxiously, his deep green eyes downcast. Jelpax walked back over to his bed and handed him the glasses case, to which Drax looked up and smiled.
“It’s a miracle,” he mumbled. He put his glasses on quickly, then blinked several times after they were on. “Holy shit! I can see again!”
“Finally.” Jelpax sighed and sat down on his own bed. “Now, before I start pestering you again, we need to talk about the fact that you never lock our door.”
//
Vansell felt better after he had his coffee.
He had, technically, broken the terms of his challenge with Millennia, but it didn’t matter. It wasn’t like she was ever going to find out about it. Rallon’s travel mug was the perfect disguise for his “caffeinated sludge” and managed to keep him connected to his drink for a total of ten minutes by then. Those ten minutes were his favorite part of the entire day. Drinking coffee was good but drinking coffee after not having it for several hours was pure bliss in a cup.
“You know, Ushas,” he began, “I hate to admit that you were right, but this was a brilliant idea. I have my coffee, nobody knows that I have my coffee, I win the challenge and give up nothing. Brilliant.”
She put on a smug smile. “I won’t say that I love to be praised, but it honestly feels really good for someone to finally acknowledge my sheer genius.”
“Yeah, right.” Koschei laughed heartily and wiped at his eyes. “Oh, that was a good one, Ushas. You really had me going there for a second.”
“I wasn’t joking.”
He made a face. “You were though. Everyone knows that you love to be praised. And maybe we all ignore you, but our professors are constantly praising you for your supposed geniusness.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s not a word,” said Vansell. He shifted forward in his seat at the lunch table and grabbed his coffee again. He took a long, drawn-out sip, then breathed out a sigh of relief. “Ah, that’s delicious.”
“Better not be coffee in there.”
Vansell jumped when he heard Millennia speak up from behind him. She gave him a friendly smile as she set her own, nearly identical travel cup down on the table, a gesture which he failed to return. Luckily, he was very good at lying and didn’t worry too much about her finding out his secret. He pushed his cup away a bit, as if to prove he wasn’t afraid of her smelling it.
“Nope,” he said, a very fake grin on his face. “Absolutely not. This is just some warm milk. Mm.”
“So, you’re all right with the coming-out-of-the-closet drink now?” asked Ushas.
He rolled his eyes. “It’s not like it’s going to turn me gay.”
Millennia seemed to know that something was up based on the way they were staring at each other, but Koschei didn’t tell either of them about that. In fact, he thought that it would be rather funny if they got busted and decided to keep it all to himself. The universe ended up working in his favor, and soon gave him the perfect fuel for laughter.
“Oh, you know what?” said Millennia, sighing. “I just realized that I forgot I was supposed to meet up with Antoie to talk about my column today. I guess I’ll see you guys later?”
“Yeah, all right. Bye.”
Koschei nearly didn’t say anything to Vansell when Millennia grabbed the wrong travel cup, but he felt like such a villain keeping it to himself that he cracked. But not until Millennia was well on her way out of the dining hall, of course; he was still a passionate fan of good pranks.
“Hey, Vansell?” He smirked when Vansell looked over him with an obviously annoyed face and raised an eyebrow in question. “Never mind, I won’t tell you if you don’t want to know. But I was just going to say that Millennia picked up the wrong mug. She’s carrying your coffee instead of her tea, and she’s probably about to drink it and find out that you cheated her challenge. But hey, you go back to hating everything that I say. It’s no problem.”
Vansell’s eyes went so wide that Koschei feared they might pop out of his head. He didn’t waste time using his words before he leapt out of his seat and hauled ass down out of the dining hall, not bothering to pay attention to the people around him as he shoved them aside. Several of his peers shouted at him when he ran into them, but he just kept on going. He would rather have been known as a loser than found out to be a cheater. There was nothing less noble than being a cheater.
“Millennia!” he shouted. It was lucky he knew where the paper set up camp, or he wouldn’t have known where to find her. “Millennia!”
To his complete and utter disappointment, Millennia was nowhere to be found when he arrived outside the door to the Prydonian Paper headquarters. He swallowed hard and turned away from the door, trying to figure out what he should do next. It was almost guaranteed at that point that he wasn’t going to find her before she took a sip of her tea—or rather, his coffee—and all he could think about was how much he hoped that she wasn’t particularly thirsty that day. Then again, she must have been, after how quickly she managed to get away from him.
As a last resort, Vansell reached into his pocket to grab his phone so that he could send her a message to alert her of the situation. Theoretically that’s what he should have done first, but he hadn’t thought of it sooner. Somehow. Unfortunately for him, his sudden, genius idea was actually a complete failure. When he had sat down to hang out with his friends, he forgot that he had taken his phone out of his pocket and set it on the table. They were probably all laughing at him for his mistake at that point, something that he decided to worry about later.
“Millennia!” he cried again. He didn’t know where else to go. Where else to look. He ran down the hall searching for her, hoping and praying that he could catch her before it was too late. “Millennia!”
The narrator, who has yet to input their opinions, would like to make note of the fact that he failed to consider going back for his phone. That probably would have saved him a lot of time. Just saying.
//
Theta felt compelled to stay with Mortimus until the nurse was finished with him, even though he had no true obligation to do so. Sometimes he hated how much he cared about his friends. It really got in the way of him being selfish.
Although he had been unconvinced before, Theta slowly came to realize that Mortimus’s joke was no joke at all. He knew that Mortimus wasn’t stupid enough to try and drag the staff into his crazy pranks, and yet he continued going on about his delusions while the nurse checked him out for kind of drugw, poison, or any other kind of substance that may have found its way into his system.
“I need to get back to my room,” said Mortimus. He tried to pull away from the nurse, but she pushed him back onto the light blue bed. “Please. Jeff is going to fire me if I don’t get back. Or worse. You don’t know what he’s capable of. You don’t know what he’s planning.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, kid.” The nurse sounded exhausted, and probably thought that he was pulling a prank. Everyone at the Academy knew that the Deca was renowned for their disastrous plans. “There is no one on Gallifrey named ‘Jeff’. And if there is, I’d like to meet their poor parents.”
“I’m not joking right now, ma’am, and Jeff isn’t from Gallifrey. Please don’t treat me like a child just because I look like one. I’m currently embroiled in a scheme that’s bigger than anything you know. You don’t understand because you don’t know who Jeff is. Well, he’s trying to take over the world. Seriously. He’s so close to doing it, and if you don’t let me out then I’m never going to be able to stop him.”
The nurse said nothing for several seconds. “All right, hon, I think you’re losing your marbles a bit here.”
“He is,” Theta interrupted. “He’s talking about a stuffed yaddlefish right now. Like, for real. I’ve met Jeff, and he is a literal stuffed yaddlefish. I honestly can’t believe that he’s actually claiming that this is true. I’m pretty sure that the real scheme here is him trying to convince us that he’s right so that he can pull some kind of prank.”
The look on Mortimus’s face was one of sheer horror. “He’s gotten to you too,” he said, yanking away from the nurse to get a good look at Theta. “That’s what he always says to me. That he isn’t real and I’m just pulling some sort of prank on everyone. I don’t think it’s true. I think that he’s the one who’s lying to me, to try to get me to remain loyal to him. Well, it’s not happening. I’m not falling for his bull—”
“Excuse me, Mortimus,” the nurse interrupted. She sat down on the stool behind her, then glanced over at Theta. “Could you step out for a minute?”
Theta hesitated. It only made him more scared to realize that he didn’t know what was going to happen to Mortimus, especially since it was something so confidential that he had to step out of the room so that he wouldn’t hear it. It didn’t take him any time at all to make the decision to stay outside and wait for his friend to come back out.
“I’m going to be blunt about this,” she went on, once Theta had left. “I need to know, honestly, if you have ever had any kind of a psychological profile done on you.”
Mortimus nodded. “Yeah, of course. It came back totally perfect. I’m clean as a bee. Bee? I don’t think that’s the right word. Is there a better word? I don’t know. I’m really confused. And rambling. You know what? I think I might have had some of Vansell’s coffee this morning.”
“You’re not going crazy because of coffee, Mortimus. I don’t know what this is, but all of my scans have come back clean. You haven’t overdosed on any coffee or soda or anything like that, and you don’t have any drugs in your system. Which is why I am so confused as to why you’re behaving like this. Are you absolutely positive that your psychological profile came back completely clean?”
“Obviously. I wouldn’t just lie to you, ma’am. I mean, I might prank you, because I prank everyone, but I wouldn’t lie about something like that. I know how important it is to be entirely aware and completely in control of your actions. I’m no fool to Prydonian society. Well, maybe I am, because I’ve never really paid attention in that class, but you know, whatever. I’m a psychology kinda dude. That’s what I like.”
“Why am I letting you ramble so much?”
He shrugged. “Most people let me ramble. I think they’re afraid of making me stop.” Mortimus frowned. “Wait, that’s Magnus. No, they don’t stop me because they know that they’ll just get me started on a stranger tangent. Anyway, yeah, I’m totally healthy. This is nothing. It’s just a prank, I promise. I was, uh, messing with Theta and things got a little bit out of hand. Don’t tell him, please?”
“Fine.” She took a deep breath and scribbled a note on the table beside her. “But if you think I’m going to let this get by without you going to the Headmaster’s office, you’re sincerely mistaken.”
Mortimus groaned when she ripped off the note and handed it over to him. He hopped up and said nothing to her as he left, ignoring her stupid calls after him. He didn’t want to hear anything she had to say. When he got out into the hallway, Mortimus tore the note into bits and threw it onto the floor.
“Don’t worry Jeff, I’m on my way back.”
“What?”
He nearly leapt out of his shoes when he heard Theta and realized that he was standing on the other side of the corridor. “Why are you still here?” he asked. “The nurse told you to go away!”
“Yeah, and now you’re talking about Jeff again,” he said. “When are you going to realize that Jeff isn’t even real?”
“He is real.” Mortimus walked over to his friend and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. He used his other hand to point at the nothing that was in front of them. “Let me paint you a picture, Thete.”
Theta almost pulled away from him but found himself mesmerized by the insane story he was telling. Somehow, Mortimus was able to create an image in his mind that was so vivid he felt like he could see it right in front of his face. It reminded him of the shows on the telly, where sometimes people would stare off into space and see a flashback or alternate reality. This was not a pleasant montage, unfortunately, and he was terrified of what was he was seeing.
Death. Destruction. The horrible image of Jeff the Stuffed Yaddlefish, ruling over Gallifrey with an iron fist. His stupid eyes were glowing red, scaring all of the innocent citizens who stood in front of him, listening to his intelligible speech. Theta stopped listening when Mortimus began to ramble and blinked back to reality by tearing himself away from him.
“Oh, my god!” he said. “I thought this was all a joke but you—you actually meant it. Jeff is evil. He’s going to take over the world.”
//
“Dude, you can’t just scream in the corridor.”
Vansell came way too close to slapping Dourgonn across the face before he stopped himself. He didn’t have the same kind of temper that Magnus had, but had gotten into similar trouble because of an inability to keep his anger under control. Clearly, he was getting better at it, though, since he managed to keep himself from clocking Dourgonn.
“I can do whatever I want in the corridor,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “Especially since we’re technically still on break until tomorrow. I’m not interrupting any classes.”
“Yeah, whatever.” Dourgonn sighed. “And to think I was actually considering telling you where Millennia went.”
It had been over ten minutes since Vansell had initially left the dining hall, and at that point so much time had gone by that he was certain it was too late. Still, he felt the need to find Millennia just in case she somehow hadn’t bothered to take a sip of her “tea” yet. Even the smallest chance was still better than no chance at all.
“Wait, you know where she is?”
“Duh. We work on the paper together.”
Suddenly, he realized that he had never touched one of those papers in his life. “You write the paper?”
“Yeah.” He rolled his eyes. “I write the column on gender and sexuality.”
“Figures.” Vansell looked up at down at Dourgonn, who was practically covered in ridiculously showy pride pins. “Can you just tell me where she is?”
The idiot got the most annoying, most smug look on his face, and again, Vansell felt the need to slap him. “Sure, I can tell you… for a price.”
“I have a better offer. How about you tell me where Millennia went, and I promise not to send Magnus over here to kick your ass?”
“Uh, yeah. Okay. That works.” He swallowed hard. “I think she said that she forgot something in her room, and she went back to get it.”
Vansell gasped. If she had gone back to her bedroom with the intention of going straight back, it was almost guaranteed that she left her travel mug behind to collect at a later time. He didn’t say anything to Dourgonn before blasting down the hallway. He didn’t have any time to waste if he was going to make it back to the Prydonian Paper’s headquarters before it was too late.
He shoved past people just as he had before, not letting a single person stop him from reaching his destination. When he finally made it to the room, he nearly burst down the door he was running so fast, with a sense of urgency that was all but wasted. He made it into the room just in time to see Millennia raise the travel mug up to her lips.
“No!” he shouted.
But it was too late. Millennia pulled the cup away from her mouth and made a face. “This isn’t my tea,” she said. She sniffed it a few times, then looked up at Vansell, who was standing guiltily in the doorway. “Why is there coffee in this travel mug?”
“Who knows?” he answered awkwardly. He couldn’t bring himself to meet her eyes. “It’s not my cup. That’s what I came here to tell you. You accidentally took Rallon’s by mistake, and I was going to switch them for you, but I actually forgot yours in the dining hall, so this is really just kind of awkward. I’ll go now.”
“Wait! I know that you were using this mug. You told me that you had warm milk in there, remember?” She sighed. “I guess I should have seen it coming. Everyone knows that you would never drink warm milk. Plus, it was kind of weird that you were using Rallon’s travel mug when you’ve never, ever touched it before.”
“I can come up with an excuse for that. Just give me a second.”
“Vansell, seriously. I don’t care that you drank coffee. It’s not a big deal. I am a little bit disappointed in you for cheating rather than being honest with me and admitting that you couldn’t do it, but still. I’m not Ushas. I won’t get mad at you or make fun of you for failing the challenge.”
He frowned. “Huh. You know, I already knew that but it’s kind of disappointing to hear you say it? Like, I almost wanted to get shouted at, since I did kind of completely fail the challenge. God, I’ve really gotten used to you weirdos and your shenanigans, haven’t I?”
“Well, you kind of have to.” Millennia shrugged and held out the travel mug for him to take. He grabbed it but didn’t drink any of the coffee inside of it. “If you didn’t get used to our friends and their ridiculous punishments and gags then you would never survive the Deca. We’ve really got our own way of life.”
A blond student that Vansell didn’t recognize spoke up from behind the desk. “You should write a story about that,” she said.
“About the Deca?” Millennia laughed. “No way. I’ll stick to my advice column, thank you.”
But somewhere, deep down, she hoped that she might get the chance to share their stories someday.
//
Drax kept his distance when he saw Magnus in the hallway the next day. It wasn’t necessarily because he saw the one person, but because he saw three separate faces, none of whom had been particularly nice to him in the past. Despite their closeness, they weren’t yet interacting; Magnus was walking by, while Drax’s cousins were focused on something in their lockers.
He nearly turned to walk away, deciding that he would rather skip dinner than get punched again, but stopped when Magnus tapped one of his cousins, Iolta, on the shoulder. Drax was still hesitant and didn’t move any closer out of fear of potentially getting hurt again, but stopped and watched what happened next. It felt like it moved in slow motion.
Iolta turned around to look at Magnus, and within seconds of them making eye contact, Magnus punched him square in the nose. Drax’s jaw dropped, and he nearly ran over, but stopped himself. He knew better than most that angry Magnus was one of the last people you ever wanted to interact with.
“What the fuck, mate?” Rillo reached over to avenge his brother, but Magnus caught his punch and whacked him in the jaw. He cried out in pain, his hands flying up to coddle his developing bruise. “What the fuck is your problem?”
“My problem?” He shook his head slowly. “I’m not the one who gets a laugh from hurting people who are skinnier and less stable than me.”
Drax didn’t know whether he should be offended or touched, so he chose not to dwell too much on the comment and instead listened to what Magnus had to say next.
“If you so much as breathe in Drax’s direction again, I will do a whole lot worse than bruise you, understand?” They nodded, and Drax had to admit it felt good to see them look afraid. “And let me get this straight, you assholes; I don’t care about you at all. Someone could come up right now and shoot you both in the head and I would not bat an eye. I don’t give two shits about your sorry asses, and I have no limits on what I’m willing to do to get rid of you. Remember that.”
Rillo and Iolta, unaware of how to deal with Magnus, ran away as soon as he finished talking. He watched them go, then turned around and ended up facing the exact same direction in which Drax was standing. Drax’s eyes widened and he took a step back. He didn’t know exactly how to respond to the situation but did know that Magnus had absolutely not intended to let him know about what had just been done. Regardless, what happened was finished, and there was no way for him to get out of it at that point.
“Hi, Magnus,” he said awkwardly. He slid back into the wall when Magnus approached him, trying to make himself somehow disappear into the red bricks. It didn’t work, and he was forced to take part in the last conversation he ever expected to find himself in.
“Hey. You all right?” There was not the least bit of compassion in Magnus’s tone despite his choice of words, and Drax couldn’t decide how he was supposed to react to that. He thought a nod would make an adequate response, and it appeared to be enough. “They won’t bother you again. You’re good, as long as you don’t tell anyone about this. If you do that, I’ll beat you myself. Understand?”
“Yeah, of course.” Drax shrugged. “But you know, for a minute there, it kind of seemed like you cared about me. I mean, I’m not accusing you of having any sort of compassion, but you clearly just did a nice thing for me. Should I say thanks? Or would you not like that?”
“You can say thanks, but I’m not going to say you’re welcome.”
“You just did.”
He rolled his eyes. “I did it out of the sheer desire to punch someone. You provided me with a target, and it happened to turn into a good deed in the process.”
“I think you did it because you actually care,” said Drax, his tone clearly affected. In a way, it felt wrong to mess with Magnus, but he couldn’t stop his personality from taking over as he placed both hands across his chest. “Don’t try to argue with me, but I just want to say that sometimes you really do things out of the kindness of your heart.”
“I have no kindness in my heart.”
“I’m not going to argue that either.”
//
Out of everything that he couldn’t experience over break, the thing that Koschei absolutely missed the least was probably the Deca’s weekly meetings. They were occasionally fun, but most of the time, they all just sat around while Ushas lectured all of them about something or another that he just didn’t even care about. To be completely honest, he wasn’t entirely certain why he even continued to show up.
“…and I know that a bunch of you probably stopped studying, but you should all remember that it’s actually really important to keep up with your work, because…”
Koschei groaned and tapped Theta on the shoulder. He was tired of listening to her drone on about her stupid break, and how she spent most of her time studying. Theta looked just as bored as he was, and so he gave his friend a look and nodded towards Drax. Theta smirked and turned around. He made a signal with his hands, and Drax smiled. He pulled the rubber band off his wrist and put one end of it on his thumbnail, then stretched it back and launched it directly at Ushas.
She barely ducked before it slammed into her face, and it hit her ponytail before she got out of the way completely. The rubber band flew directly into the chalkboard behind the professor’s desk and bounced off the wall before landing safely on the ground. Ushas stared at it for a few seconds before she looked up, her face almost red with rage. She looked around the room, as if searching for the guilty party, and stopped when her eyes landed on Drax.
“Where’s your rubber band?” she demanded.
He put on an innocent face. “What rubber band?”
“The one that you always wear around your wrist. It’s not there. Where is it, and why did one of those things just fly at my head? You could have shot out my eye!”
“I know, I have brilliant aim, don’t I?” Drax smirked and sort of leaned back in his seat. He reached a hand behind him, hoping to receive a high-five from Jelpax. He didn’t comply, and instead flicked him in the shoulder. “Well, anyway, nobody cares what you have to say. Plus, Theta was the one who told me to do it. He made a little signal with his hands.”
Ushas snapped her head around to look at him. “Why would you do that?” she demanded.
“Koschei told me to!” he blurted. “He nodded towards Drax and I knew what he meant so I went along with it. Sorry that I just wanted to have one more minute of fun before Jeff takes over the world.”
“Who the hell is Jeff?”
Mortimus lifted his head from the desk in the back of the room and stared at her, his eyes wide. “Don’t you dare speak that name,” he said. “That is a horrible, evil name. You’d be better off talking about Beelzebub. At least that won’t get you turned into a slave.”
“What?” The look on Ushas’s face was that of utter confusion. She was so lost on what was said that she didn’t even know where to start with the questions she had. “Does someone want to explain this to me? Because last I checked, there’s no one at this school named Jeff.”
Before either Mortimus or Theta had a chance to explain their insane side of the story, Magnus interrupted. “There is no one here named Jeff. All of this is one insane story involving a stuffed yaddlefish, a kleptomaniac, and two dozen stolen goods. Now don’t pry any further. I promise, you really don’t want to know about the rest of this.”
Ushas nodded. She trusted Magnus’s no-nonsense radar. “Anyway, does anyone have anything else to talk about?” she asked. “Perhaps at least one of you would like to share a story about how you studied over break?”
“None of us studied over break,” said Vansell, rolling his eyes. “That’s why it’s called break, you nitwit.”
Rallon glanced over at him. “Have you had your coffee yet?”
“No. Millennia is forcing me to try her challenge again, and for an entire day this time.”
“It’s not my fault you cheated the first time,” said Millennia. “All you have to do is last one day. No plots, no ploys, no schemes. You can do it, can’t you?”
“Of course, I can.” Vansell took a sip from his travel mug and let out a satisfied sigh. “I just hope that this tea will hold me over.”