Straight-Up Not Having A Good Time At Night Raven College: Chapter 1

Chapter 5: A Class Escape

The group had to make a quick detour back to the Ramshackle Dorm so Kat could retrieve her new lab gear.
Somehow, though, they managed to reach the classroom before the second bell rang.

She hadn't had time to put the gear on properly, though.
She had the lab coat draped over one arm, the safety goggles were hanging around her neck, and she'd just shoved the gloves haphazardly in her pocket.

Coughing, she bent over with her hands on her knees, breathing heavily for a few seconds.

"I'm... REALLY sorry," she apologized, straightening up and pushing her bangs out of her eyes. "It's-- I, I REALLY didn't mean to be late, it's just--"

Looking around, she blushed.

Oh, geez-- everybody was looking at her... Or more specifically THEM, since Ace, Deuce and Grim were also with her.

The room was...
Well, not to stretch an example, but it was a lot like the Potions room from Harry Potter.
It had a sort of dungeon-y feel, all stone walls, but was a lot bigger than the set in the movies. It was even down in the basements, too...

There were shelves lining the walls, filled with-- well, stuff.
Some of it looked like standard school lab equipment... Beakers, vials, thermometers, the works.
Most of it was definitely not, though.
There were lots of small wooden boxes, like tiny chests of drawers. All kinds of weird glass containers and bottles filled with... Substances.
Big, fancy old books, sprigs of dried plants-- basically, if you imagined a wizard's or alchemist's lab, it was pretty much exactly that.

There were wooden desks with barstools arranged in a ring around the room-- a lot like a lab classroom back home, actually.
Almost all of them were full of students.
And all of them were staring in her direction.

"Ah-- you must be my new homeroom students," a voice rang out.

There was the scrape of a chair being pushed back, and she looked around.

There was a large mahogany desk in the corner by the door. A man had just stood up from its thronelike chair, padded with red velvet. He didn't so much walk over to them as sashay, wingtip shoes clacking authoritatively on the stone floor.

Coming to a stop, he observed the group with one hand on his hip.

He had a-- well, it looked like a weird combination of a riding crop and a pointer in his other hand, with a red dog collar hanging from it like a cell phone strap.

Whatever it was, he tapped his chin thoughtfully with the end of it for a second, one thin eyebrow quirking.
Then he cast a sharp gaze at Ace and Deuce, standing awkwardly behind her and trying to catch their breath as well.

"Trappola. Spade. Sit down-- and take the little mongrel with you, too."
He pointed his whatever-it-was at Grim, who had collapsed into a puddle at the door, panting.
"This one--"
Here he whipped the pointer at her, making her jump.
"Stays here. I'd like to talk to the brains of the operation for a moment."

"What?!" Grim protested.
Instead of saying anything back, Ace and Deuce just nodded. Snatching up Grim, Deuce bowed sharply, then scuttled off, followed by Ace.
Kat watched them go, then turned back to the man, blinking awkwardly.

He was tall-- about six feet, so roughly the same height as Crowley-- and very slim.
His outfit had a lot of similarities to the Headmaster's, actually, at least in construction. Suit pants, vest, shirt and tie, complete with oversized coat... Except he was actually wearing his correctly.

The whole ensemble was black-and-white, with accents of deep red-- shiny red leather gloves, red tie, red socks, even red buttons on the vest. The coat looked like fur, lined with red silk and made up of alternating black-and-white strips.
She wasn't an expert, but the fur looked pretty real...