CHAPTER NINE
Left to the other half of Masquerade, Melody bounces off into her courtyard immediately encountering a foul stench in the form of the tall and brutish Okirk Harrow-Rieve. She rolls her eyes as the beastly man stomps up from his seat on a close-by bench.
WOMPF
"Hey!"
His barreling yell shoves birds out of their trees.
"Want to go take a quick shower?"
Okirk yells out interrupting everyone in the courtyard, an impressively loud mouth. Heads turn and hands are quick to cover mouths as friends begin to whisper to each other about the implications.
"Making sure to get that stink of Cursed off you…"
Okirk finishes, walking over to Melody, his lackeys close in behind him. He leans in close to Melody now, wearing a disgusted face with his lips reaching up to his nose as if to smell putridity.
"I'll be sure to tell Mr. Verim you were late for a good reason."
He cocks his arms up at his chest, satisfied. His friends curl up behind his enormous back.
"Heh heh, yeah."
"Stinky, Cursed boy."
The two add in their quips, high-fiving for good measure.
"Oh, shut up Okirk!"
Melody scoffs at the group, huffing at them. Melody leans forward a bit raising her hand and tightly packing a small fist.
"Or do you want another socked jaw?"
Melody wrings her fist in the air, reminding Okirk and his friends of the punch that threw him across the floor. That opportunity presented itself when Mr. Verim decided to break up an argument between the two of them with a Burn Flash, powerful distracting magic that managed to blind everyone momentarily. Melody, with immediate recourse, took that chance to strike at Okirk, for likewise making fun of her and her friendship with the Cursed boys, Mason and Sam.
"Tch. Whatever."
Okirk reels back, pulling himself away from dealing with Melody for now. But just before breaking away too far, he turns on his heel and juts his finger in the air, beating to the words,
"Though, I gotta applaud."
Melody looks at him quizzically.
"It was a good thing you did there,"
Okirk slashes through the air with his open palm, mimicking Melody's strike at Sam.
"- beating on that other Cursed boy."
Okirk smiles, relishing in the pain of a Cursed.
Melody looks confused and irritated now, the one side of her upper lip twitching.
"He's a friend."
Melody firmly states, tightening the fist at her side.
"Hey, whatever works Mel. "
Okirk's shoulders nearly touch his ears, shrugging her off.
"You got the party started, we're just enjoying the prospect of joining in later on."
Okirk muses, his arrogant stare pulling away from her. Okirk hints at planning some sort of attack on Sam, if not, just meaning the whole of the Cursed class. His malicious intent drips off of his wide shoulders.
"What?"
Melody's words fall from her lips like stones, weighing the air of the space around them down. This stops him from where he is because he knows he has her attention with this.
"If you try to hurt them-"
Melody tries to continue.
"If I try to hurt them, what, you'll tell your father about it?"
Okirk teases, knowing Melody's parentage is a sore point for her. He smugly lowers his jaw to a point.
Melody loses all composure. She drops her hands to her sides, loose and limp. Her eyes glaze over with an uncaring air. Slowly, Melody reaches to her hair, pulling at her Halo hair tie.
Melody's Blessed manifestation takes the form of a Halo, a rarity among a lot of Masquerade.
"Woah."
"Hey, O?"
Okirk's goons take a step back, looking at the back of his head, worried about the potential of this endangering scene.
Melody's father is the man who currently heads the council that created the Cursed and Blessed school of Masquerade. A fact that Melody detests with everything she is. Okirk and his goons poking at this particular bear is regrettable.
"Come on then."
Melody quickly slides the Halo tie from her hair, letting the pink locks fall loosely at her shoulders and back. Swiftly, Melody lowers the Halo around her wrist now, shrinking and growing with the proper size to fit her form, sitting as a hovering bracelet. The Halo begins to hum and vibrate the air around her arm, powering up further with the Blessed energy she's actively pouring into it.
"Feh. You want to do this, then we're in."
Okirk raises his arms, behind each are his friends who look more nervous than Okirk, but apparently still willing.
They place a weapon in each of Okirk's hands.
Melody only realizes now that they seem to always be carrying everything Okirk wants. The boy on his left has a drink that Okirk must be sipping, a mace with eight points that looks to be made of a blue-glass material, and his bag full of school books. And the other friend behind Okirk's right seems to carry his uniform jacket for when it gets to be too warm, a pair of solid black shades to wear in case of extra-sunny weather, and another weapon, this one made of the same blue-glass material but taking the shape of a longsword that starts thin, widens slightly near the tip and comes to a sharp thin point again.
Krk KLK
Continued in PART THIRTY-SIX…