Disclaimer: Oh, how nice it would be to even know the people in Malice Mizer. *sad sigh* Alas, I don’t.
Puff: *practically pounces on Mana* You don’t feel good?!
Mana: *nervously nods*
Puff: Gackt, prepare the hospital room! We may have to operate!
Gackt: O_O *runs off and does as he was told*
Mana: Really, Puff, it’s just a headache. I just need a little nap.
Puff: *straps Mana down to table* Nonsense. A headache could be caused by loads of stuff. We must care for you properly.
Chapter Ten
Promptly the next morning, the newly hired servants arrived at the doorstep. They were demonstrating varying degrees of cheer and wakefulness.
“Good morning, Mana! Good morning, Gackt! Today is so nice and pretty,” Britney exclaimed happily, bouncing in through the door, but dropped her happy tone when she saw the slightly stunned looks on her employers’ faces, “Do you mind that I called you by your first names? It just that I don’t know your last name.”
“First names are fine,” Mana said nicely, managing to find a weak smile to make Britney happy once again.
“I just wanted to make sure, since a lot of people don’t want their employees to call them by their given names,” Britney explained, twirling the freshly clipped ends of her brown hair on her fingers, “I better go find something to do.” With that, she hurried upstairs to get things done early.
“How can she be that hyper this early in the morning?” Adam questioned sleepily, stumbling in as he rubbed his glazed green eyes. His blonde hair was limply spiked and rumpled, like he had just gotten up.
“I have no clue,” Gackt replied, glancing over the rather unprofessional butler with reproachful cerulean eyes, “She’s probably get a lot done, though, with all that energy.” Adam blinked and then uncertainly ran his fingers through his hair.
“Children are evil,” Allison stated bluntly as she walked in briskly, “Always waiting till the last minute with projects for school and what not. Always putting up a fight when it’s time for school. Always being impossible to deal with. Thank goodness that their teachers take care of them for most of the day.”
“How many?” Mana asked, genuinely interested.
“How many what?” Allison responded, obviously not concentrating at the moment.
“Children. How many children do you have?” Mana asked slowly, speaking carefully so that Allison would have time to catch each word.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I have two kids. Twins; a boy, Jeremy, and girl, Jamie. They’re little demons most of the time, but they can be great,” Allison stated, hurriedly pointing out that her children could behave, “I suppose that I should go to the kitchen to cook. What do you two want for breakfast?” Apprehensively, Mana and Gackt looked at each other and then at the chef.
“You know, I’m not really hungry,” Gackt said quickly, truthfully not wanting food but mainly not wanting the house to get burned down with Allison so distracted.
“I’m not hungry either,” Mana agreed, gently rearranging the folds of his dark blue skirt. Allison nodded politely, looking around for something to do until given a task.
“I’m hungry. Would you make me a bit of breakfast?” Adam asked sweetly, smiling at Allison. He made his green eyes shimmer as innocently as was humanly possible for him.
“What do you want, Adam?” Allison questioned as she gestured for the man to follow her into the kitchen. He immediately began rattling off a long list of things that he wouldn’t mind eating; a list that didn’t exclude anything. Allison was lightly laughing as she began to search for ingredients.
“Mana, for some reason, I’m a little bit more worried about our general health than I was before we hired them,” Gackt said offhandedly in Japanese, smirking when all the noise in the kitchen paused momentarily, “Our chef is distracted and our butler looks like he needs four days of sleep to be semi-awake. I think Britney is the only one who will get her job done right.”
Just as Mana was about to say something, a loud crash echoed from the second floor. It was promptly followed by a nervous yelp.
“I didn’t mean to hit it!” Britney called out, her voice strained, “Can you tell me where a broom or a vacuum is?” She ran down the stairs, stumbling the entire way before she halted in front of the oddly amused musicians.
“Try the storage room, Britney,” Mana said calmly, pointing her in through the kitchen, “You might have to look a bit, though. Take your time.” Britney nodded slowly, pacing herself carefully as she walked through the door.
“Let’s go see what she broke,” Mana whispered to Gackt, wrapping his fingers around the vocalist’s wrist to pull him along. Gackt, very curious himself, happily followed Mana along. Quietly, they checked each of the rooms; meanwhile, they could hear Britney crying about how she had already messed-up so early.
“I think that it was just a vase,” Gackt said, gesturing at a table that was obviously missing its centerpiece and the wide scattering of shattered glass on the floor. He laughed lightly at Britney’s ability to destroy a vase that had already been knocked over several times since their arrival.
“We needed to move it any way and now we don’t have to look for somewhere new to put it,” Mana commented, checking the bottoms of his shoes for glass before heading back down, “Maybe we should thank her for breaking it.”
“That would shock all three of them. But we should go tell her it’s all right. She’s probably freaking out right about now,” Gackt said peacefully, his voice not even matching what he was saying in the slightest. Mana signaled his agreement, though he looked like he’d rather see Britney’s face if they thanked her.
Before they went a step further, Britney bounded around the corner dragging the vacuum cleaner behind her. She flushed a brilliant crimson, the color spreading even to her scalp, when she spotted Mana and Gackt watching her casually.
“I’m so sorry I broke the vase,” Britney yelped, carefully setting the vacuum off to the side before she walked forward with fear-filled eyes, “I’ll take what ever punishment you see fit.” She gulped the moment after the words escaped her and she remembered all of the questions on the application.
“Let’s scare her a bit,” Gackt said deviously, speaking softly in his native tongue, “She won’t know what we’re saying and she’ll be a lot more careful from now on.”
“Okay, but what should I say?” Mana asked, letting his blue eyes sharpen a bit as they wandered over Britney’s tense face.
“Whatever pops into your head, I guess,” Gackt stated flatly, whispering into Mana’s ear to make Britney worry even more. Mana, rather amused by how nervous they made people, shook his head sharply like Gackt had just suggested something ghastly.
For the next three minutes, they discussed a new song while talking in low, suspicious tones. Gestures, indicative of some form of torture if you were expecting it, also played a large part in the conversation. By the time Mana and Gackt decided they had enough fun for they day, Britney’s brown eyes were stretched as wide as they could go and she looked like she was about to pass out.
“We’ve decided that we won’t take any action this time,” Mana said softly, his voice echoing with dark promises and his sapphire eyes matching, “Just go clean it up before some one steps on the glass.” He smiled lightly, his painted lips noticeably curling upward, to tell her that she was forgiven.
“Thank you! I’ll hurry and get the glass off of the carpet,” Britney stated happily, positively beaming with happiness. She snatched the vacuum from where she left it and was rushing past her employers when Gackt stopped her.
“Perhaps you should slow down,” Gackt warned nonchalantly before wandering off into the kitchen to check on the other two. Britney nodded at Mana, slowing her pace greatly as she went up the candlelit stairwell.
“You look a lot more alert,” Mana said to Adam, startling the man who was still eating off of the platter of food before him.
“Ally is a good cook,” Adam stated brightly, quickly stuffing his face with more food. Mana, Gackt, and Allison watched him blankly, looking around at one another every few seconds. The butler finished off the rest of his meal in mere moments, sighing happily before getting up to put his plate in the sink.
“You want anything else?” Allison asked sarcastically, though her tone was lost on the merrily satiated Adam.
“No thanks. I don’t think I could eat another bite for hours,” Adam said, patting his stomach, “I’ll go wait in the living room for something to do.” As he was walking out of the room, he grabbed several pieces of fresh fruit from a bowl on the white counter.
“I am so happy he didn’t get anything on the floor,” Allison sighed, rinsing out a few frying pans in the sink before arranging them in the dishwasher, “The dark wood is so pretty and shiny. It would be impossible to clean one spot without having to do the whole floor, because of the polish.” Mana looked at her like she was crazy, batting his long eyelashes over his eyes to clear his mind a bit.
“Why would you worry about getting stuff on the floor?” Mana asked, pulling out a claw footed chair from the table. He carefully set himself down, making sure his dark skirt wouldn’t wrinkle.
“It’s nothing against Adam. It’s just that I worry about things like that. I guess it stems from having two five year olds in my house at feeding time,” Allison said jokingly, grinning when she realized that she had finished with all of the pans in the sink. Mana and Gackt both sighed happily, relieved to find out that their butler wouldn’t make a pigsty out of their house.
“I wonder if things are just hectic because it’s their first day on the job,” Gackt said, sitting down next to the guitarist. Allison looked over her shoulder apprehensively, curious as to the meaning of the exchange in Japanese and worried that it might be all about her.
“I’m starting to hope so. We might have to pack away all the breakables and buy twice as much food. Good thing Allison seems safe enough now, or I might have had to think about if servants were a bright idea,” Mana said cheerfully, brushing his long hair off of his face, “They’re going to be rather amusing, that much is for certain.”
Author’s Note: I just love my new characters. *huggles them*