Short Story – A rave before the game(r).

[This short story has been "requested" (really he let me write whatever I wanted, which I like) by Fenrius for the month of November 2017. It happens at the very beginning of the Gamer story.]

‘This is super boring,’ Rave thought and sighed quietly. The teacher at the front was blabbering about some unimportant stuff. Not that there was any important stuff she could have been blabbering about. Why her dad insisted that she went to school, when she could just beat up thugs and small gangs for a living, Rave would never fully understand. 

‘I mean, I get that ya have safety concerns, daddy,’ she monologued in her head, ‘but your little girl is almost twenty, and she is super bored…better go somewhere fun.’ Rave stood up, shouldered her bag and headed for the door. The teacher didn’t even ask where she was heading, they both knew she would say ‘bathroom’ and be back in about ten minutes. Today she felt like skipping the remaining thirty minutes though, biology wasn’t really her thing, much less did she care about knowing what exactly made up blood, falling through that test didn’t bother her either. That this would impact her scores negatively wasn’t any argument to stay, she really only was here for show.

She closed the door behind her with some caution. Just because she didn’t give a fuck about her own school performance, didn’t mean she had to be overly disrespectful towards her fellow students. They would all live boring enough lives as is. No giant monsters, no shady organizations, no life-threatening situations only a bad punchline and a good punch could solve. Just slaving away at some sort of secure existence. Totally bland and boring. 

‘Wonder what I should do now?’ Rave wondered, pushing back an annoying streak of hair. When it returned to bother her further, she pinched it between two fingers and looked at it like that would make it behave. The brown thing was annoying her, if it weren’t for Moira she would just run around with her pink mane and be done with it. Nowadays, hair colouring was a thing, so, unlike with her grandma, the normal people wouldn’t be weirded out by her natural haircolour, getting Gaia on Rave’s ass. In its normal state, her hair looked unruly as a fight between kittens on the day the catnip’s price was reduced, but at least it kept out of her eyes.

Also, it made her look sexy as all hell, right now she just looked plain, the sexy kind of plain, but still plain. At least the school uniform was almost illegal levels of striper design. She would have loved to exchange the skirt for a pair of tight pants though. She couldn’t even bind up her hair in a pony tail, the primary objective of having her hair like that was to hide her face when she carefully sneaked by Moira. In conclusion: Everything was not the strand of hair’s, but Moira’s fault. Which gave her a great idea, about what to kill time with.

If memory served Rave correctly, Moira would be outside on the sports field right now. Meaning that she would have some time to mess with the stuff in her locker. ‘Now that’s a plan,’ Rave smirked and hastened her step, completely forgetting the annoying strand of brown. Busy fishing her Walkman out of her pocket she didn’t realize that she was about to collide with someone until it was already too late. 

Turning the corner, she bumped into someone rather broad. ‘Man, how I hate this,’ Rave thought as she acted like she had been the one just running into some of bigger strength and balance, stumbling backwards and almost falling. She had put up that show so often it was almost second nature. 

It was one of the Frank group jocks, a group she only knew existed because of they happened to crash a few rave’s she had fun at. Wallace? Maybe? She knew that she made up with that guy while being semi-drunk on a party. She also knew that he had been getting pushy and that she had proceeded to karate chop the hosts desk to make an example what would happen to his balls when he continued. It had been an old desk, that plausibly couldn’t have survived the impact, but even that had pissed Gaia off enough to have Rave fall through a suddenly collapsing manhole cover on the way home. She hadn’t been hurt, but she no longer possessed that pair of pants. 

“I liked those pants,” she told Wallace(?) when she got up. The guy just stared at her in confusion but, remembering her comments about his balls, let her go without another word, just shaking his head when she passed. 

Rave knew that this would probably add to the reputation she had, whatever exactly that was, but she didn’t give a damn. ‘Let the normies babble,’ she thought and plugged the earpieces of the Walkman where they belonged. She turned up the volume and practically flew down the stairs after looking at the time. 

To the sound of the Arty Remix of the Worlds Collide Song, Rave hasted into the girl’s dress room. A random onlooker would have probably classified the ease with which Rave made out Moira locker as stalker like. However, as Rave justified to herself, if she had to live under the constant threat of the paladin uncovering her identity at school and annoying the fuck out of her, then she at the very least had the right to pull a few pranks on the redhead. Which in turn meant that she needed to know about her schedule.

Rave pulled the notebook from Moira’s back and stole a pen as well while she was at it. Then she started writing. 

‘Hey Moi-Moi, how ya doing? I am doing great. Wanna throw down behind the school today? Cause I sure as hell do, I will beat’ya up and then you can stop bothering me and Baldy, sounds like a plan? 

Rave~’

She put the notebook back and carelessly threw the pen after it. Then she closed the bag and placed it back in the locker. Rave wasn’t sure if Moira had just resigned trying to shut her out or if the paladin had just forgotten it. Either way Rave closed the locker and was on her way. 

The prank here was that Rave had no intention whatsoever to fight Moira. At least not today. Instead she would confirm that Moira was waiting for her to appear and then treat herself to some ice cream at that nice inner-city shop and stroll around some other places using her actual appearance. Shops and places, she normally had to run around in camouflage for, because Moira also hung around those places occasionally.

‘All that just because Baldy has to use those crystalized souls for some alchemical stuff,’ Rave thought. ‘Muscle head should get a different hobby, it’s not like he has any talent for it. Unlike Jimmie, annoying guy, but at least knows what he is doing.’ Rave heard some distant voices, as always, the sports classes ended early so that everyone could take a shower before heading to the next class. ‘Better scramble,’ she thought and made her way out of there.

With nothing else to do on the break, except maybe play Candy Crush or something, Rave decided to stalk Moira a bit more. ‘Now even I am calling it stalking,’ Rave reprimanded herself. ‘I really need something to do, or someone, like a boyfriend or a girlfriend, don’t care really. Someone who can throw some nice punches and plays League…who is that?’ 

She realized that she wasn’t alone in her quest to sneak after the paladin. Some lanky dude, seriously, almost unhealthily thin, and pale like the cellar-dweller that he probably was. Brown hair, not particularly outstanding looks, pretty average. Would maybe be sexy is he got into the gym. No idea who that was, but he looked like a nerd through and through. Anyhow, he was not particularly great at that whole sneaking thing, stumbling right into Moira’s field of view, only to retreat back behind a corner. Then he cowered down and started starring very intensely at the air. Rave was just watching the whole embarrassment take place, from her safe position on a bench in the hallway. 

She was hiding in plain sight and acting as inconspicuous as possible, playing Candy Crush on her smartphone while drinking some boxed juice. She wasn’t a good stalker, but at least she didn’t make it blindingly obvious what she was doing. Bad news though, Moira had seen that newcomer and therefore the paladin now got dangerously close to the techno-lover herself. 

Rave didn’t move, suddenly walking away would have attracted unwanted attention. She just kept sitting and hoped that nobody would think about if she was there or not. Worked surprisingly well. The guy asked about the Golden Rose and Moira then dragged him down the corridor and into a dimly lit and somewhat isolated part. ‘Now that is interesting,’ Rave thought and followed them, she got close enough that she could pick up what was being said and then leaned against the wall. That was quite risky, but maybe she would hear something interesting.

And she heard something interesting indeed. Some guy with a newly awoken innate ability? At this school full of normal people? And he had no idea what was going on? ‘Sounds like something Baldy should know,’ Rave decided and walked away when Moira started her very boring Abyss 101 speech. 

She walked into the school’s yard and distanced herself far enough from all other student groups that she wouldn’t be bothered. Then she called Travolta. “The fuck do you want, Rave?” came the angry man’s voice. “And before you ask, no, I am not picking you up to beat up some third-rate fuckers two towns over just because you are bored. If Regan finds out that I even did that ONCE, which I did because I fucking needed something from them, not because you asked me, he will grab me by the balls and only let go once I pay double interest on next month’s repayments.” 

“Just shaddup for a moment, Baldy,” Rave said, having checked for any dirt under her nails while the guy was talking. “An Innate Ability User just popped up, and he has no clue about the Abyss whatsoever.” “You serious?” Travolta asked, “What are you doing talking to me then?! GO GET TO HIM!” “He is kinda with Moira right now.” “That redheaded fucking nuisance?! Well, fuck me sideways. Like the Golden Rose doesn’t already have this fucking city under its heels. Think she’ll get him into that organization?” “Dunno, whatever the case is we should keep looking though,” Rave said and looked at her fingernails. She was feeling like blue, but they were green right now. She was going to repaint them tomorrow. Yeah, a nice clear blue. 

“Yeah, we fucking better,” Travolta growlingly agreed. “You think his ability is strong?” “No idea, but it sounds interesting, guy does not look cute at all, but he has videogame character powers,” Rave explained. “What? Like he can jump super high?” Travolta, obviously confused, asked. “Christ, Baldy, get with the times. I mean like RPG’s, stats and all that jazz. Stop only playing on those Arcade Machines, I even bought Computer’s for you and Jimmie.” “Those are only there to access the Abyss Auction,” Travolta stated. 

“Urgh, whatevs,” Rave dropped that discussion. “What’s the plan?” “We’ll try contacting that new guy, you picked up his name?” “Uhm, John something-man, I think?” “You are so fucking useless Rave,” Travolta cursed. “Don’t you get pissed with me, old-timer, I can find him again,” She defended herself. “Good, Jimmie and I will be on stand-by near the school tomorrow. Just in case you fuck up.” “Ja, Ja, shaddup and see that you do. I’ll go to class.” “I doubt that.” 

Rave smirked as she put down the phone. Well, he was right, she wasn’t heading back to class. She was going to train up a bit. Maybe she WOULD beat up Moira tomorrow.