The easy option would have been to keep his mouth shut. For one, he wouldn't have all these idiots staring at him as if he were some exhibit at the museum. They were probably sitting there wondering how many hits he could take before he went down. One? Two? Maybe even a third, if Gemu was feeling generous. Hah! If these bastards really think that the great Lucine Fastus himself would fall to some brute like him, they were even more idiotic than previously thought!
Gemu Kolas was the tyrannical king of the school. Towering heads over anyone else, with muscles that could lift a car and a glare that would freeze you to the spot, there weren't many who would dare talk to him.
The King was not someone to mess around with. Opposing him was asking for a death sentence.
Calling him a filthy, degenerate closet weeb in front of half the school? Well that's basically…
"…Asking to get you, your entire family and your future children murdered in their sleep. What the hell is Lucine thinking?"
A tall boy was standing at the edge of the crowd, blowing his dark hair out of his eyes, craning his neck to get a glimpse of the fight. Next to him, an uninterested girl who bore a striking resemblance to Lucine, stood, tapping away at her phone.
"Come on, Fugo. Why're you so interested in seeing that idiot get beat again? I thought we were gonna go out after school today."
Fugo looked at her, exasperated.
"I think the real question is why you don't care that the person getting beaten up is your brother. Lucina,you really don't care about anything do you?"
Lucina looked up from her phone and smirked at him.
"I care about plenty of things, just, he isn't one of them."
She began to walk away.
"You, on the other hand, are one of the things that I really care about, so don't you dare get beaten up trying to save Lucine."
Glancing back at Fugo, she gave him a small smile.
"So you better come over to mine once the commotion is over, okay?"
Fugo smiled at the angel walking away, wondering how lucky he was to have such an amazing person in his life. And he turned, greeted by the sight of a demon swinging at Lucine with terrifying strength, wondering what the fuck Lucine was thinking when he thought any of this was a good idea.
Somehow, Lucine managed to duck below death, and in retaliation, slapped Gemu across the face.
The connection was heard across the entire school.
The crowd fell dead silent in astonishment. First off, he had been bold enough to insult him in front of everyone, and now he dared to actually attack him? There's a thin line between bravery and stupidity, and everyone was sure where Lucine Fastus stood. Although, with a reputation like his, it was only a matter of time until something like this happened.
Lucine quickly ducked away as a second punch came whistling through the air.
"What's wrong, Kollasus? You seem pretty red in the face after being humiliated this bad. Haha, wait! What am I saying? You can only be humiliated if anyone actually cares enough about you to spare you a thought."
The crowd winced at this last comment; it was rich that Lucine of all people would say that. But it didn't matter. The insult connected, and it connected hard.
Gemu turned a deep shade of crimson. He started cracking his knuckles, a warning sign to anyone who had an IQ over room temperature.
"Oh? You feel angry enough to try to intimidate me? Ha, I don't see how you thought it would work anyway. Do I look like you can scare me?"
Well of course not. You've got to have some form of self-awareness to feel fear.
Lucine dropped his guard and started gloating in earnest. The crowd groaned and looked away. Hearing Lucine gloat was horrible, but if it meant he was standing up to the dictator of the school, it was just about manageable.
"All of that muscle was traded in exchange for a lot of intelligence. But then again, a thug like you doesn't really need much intelligence to do your work."
Lucine's laughs resonated in Gemu's ears. Dark storm clouds gathered over his face, a warning sign for anyone except Lucine.
"I mean, hopefully you know how to feed yourself properly."
Everyone knew that Lucine had a smart mouth, but the amount of shit that came out of it was astounding.
There is also a time and place to have a smart mouth. I'm not sure if it was obvious or not, but the moral of this story is "When a seven foot tall titanic monster is approaching you with murder in his eyes, its not a good time to have a smart mouth"
Unfortunately for Lucine, it seems like he wasn't aware of this very useful lesson, and he kept running his mouth.
"Whats the point of having all that muscle if you can't hit anyone with it? My Nan has better aim than you, and she has Parki-"
Lucine woke up, slouched over Fugo's shoulders, walking on a road back from school.
His blurry eyes focused and he became aware of how much his body hurt.
"F-Fugo? Wait, what just happened? Where'd Gemu go? Was that all a dream?"
Fugo glared at him with a scowl on his face.
"No idiot, it was real. I was just helping you get to hell, but now that you're awake you can drag your own sorry ass there by yourself."
Despite saying this, Fugo kept supporting Lucine on his shoulder. Beads of sweat dripped down from his face to the ground, squeezed out by the harsh rays of the sun.
"You know, it wouldn't hurt for you to lose some weight."
Finding a nearby bench, he threw Lucine on it, and groaned in relief as the weight was taken off of his shoulder.
"You better thank me for carrying you halfway home."
Lucine gritted his teeth and flushed red, looking away.
"I don't need you for the other half. You're welcome to leave." He began twirling his black hair. "What happened anyway? I don't remember anything after me talking about my Nan."
"Where's my thanks, you arrogant prick?"
"Shut up, you dirty little sister-thief. I asked you what happened."
"He punched you in the jaw and sent you to sleep."
"Tch, as if I would go down that easily."
Fugo couldn't help but sigh. He got up and stretched; it wouldn't be good if he kept Lucina waiting for even longer. He didn't want to get her in a bad mood.
Or did he? Fugo grinned mischievously. She was always pretty cute when she was mad.
"And if he only hit my head, why does my entire body ache? I feel like I got body slammed by ten gorillas. " Lucine shouted after him.
Fugo gave him one last look of pity before he walked away. " Well, you didn't get body slammed by ten gorillas. One gorilla body slammed you ten times while you were unconscious."
He walked away, leaving Lucine alone to contemplate the life choices that lead him here.
But of course, the great Lucine Fastus was too great for self-reflection,
He felt a need to sort out his appearance, since getting thrashed by that gorilla wasn't going to be good on his look. Getting up, he looked around for something to look at himself with, and as if the wish had spawned it in, a mirror glinted across the road, in a small alleyway. Perfect!
He walked into alleyway and saw that the mirror was dirty and battered. Well, it was a lot like himself then. He grabbed it.
He was prepared to see the beauty of his face be tainted by all the suffering he had gone through in that fight. He knew that he was going to look bad, but he thought he would still be recognisable. He did not think that the face staring back from the mirror would alien to him.
His ears were now pointy and long, like those of an elf.
He had thick horns on his forehead, like those of a bull.
There were large bat-like wings folded over the clothes on his back.
But worst of all, his sleek black hair, his pride and joy, the hair he had spent hours on making sure was as good as it could be, had been bleached into a disgusting white.
No.
This mirror was wrong.
There's no way that great Lucine Fastus' beautiful face would be defiled like this.
He felt his ears. Pointed and long
He felt his forehead. The horns were still there
He tried to unfold his wings. They unfolded in all of their sinister magnificence.
He grabbed his hair and pulled it into his field of vision. It was white.
What the hell was going on?
He stumbled out of the alleyway and looked around. Why had all the colours been dulled? Why did everything sound sharper? Why did the air feel different?
He needed to find Fugo, Lucina, anyone! But could he even look at them with such a hideous face?
"There he is, Fugo. What are you looking around for?"
He turned around at the sound of her voice. It was Lucina! No matter how ugly he looked, his loving sister would always help him…
Until he saw that she and Fugo both had changed. Fugo had two horns, not as big as Lucine's, coming out of his forehead, and even though his wings were folded, he could tell they were a lot larger than his own.
Lucina's slender tail was holding onto Fugo's arm, as if in imitation of her holding onto him. She had horns as well, although they were a lot smaller and barely showed out of her ghostly white hair. Her back, unlike Lucine's and Fugo's, was bare; she had no wings to speak of.
He stared at them.
They stared back.
Lucina broke the silence. "We came all this way to take you home, so if you start saying some bullshit about you not needing anyone, I'll curb stomp you."
He stared at them.
They stared back.
"Are you guys okay?" Lucine's voice came out flat and emotionless.
Fugo seemed genuinely confused. "I think we should be asking you that. You look like you've seen a ghost."
Did he not understand that all three of them looked like demons?
Lucine gazed back at the face in the mirror. In his mind, there was a single idea dominating all rational thought.
"I got thrashed so hard that I got knocked into another world."