The Only Thing We Have To Fear

hastiully titleed Part 22

Pepper's face lit up as soon as she saw Roman. He was still dressed in pink and covered in a light smattering of blue blood, and that made him all the more enticing in her eyes. He was like Prince Charming, fresh from a fight, coming to save her.

She wanted to call out to him, but then she remembered... she wasn't a human anymore.

Exactly fifty-two minutes and thirteen seconds ago, Peter, her friend and the current senior secretary, had dragged her away from him in the gymnasium. The Student Body President invited her to take a seat next to her in the cafeteria where she and the other seniors discussed Roman with the intent to kill. Precisely two minutes and forty-three seconds into the conversation, Pepper couldn't sit and listen as her friends discussed his demise in such detail. The idea of Roman, so vivacious and lively, dead and limp, never to look her in the eye or talk to her again, mortified her.

An argument broke out among the seniors about the damage Roman had caused. In the heat of the moment, two dozen teenagers--with raging hormones, conflicting desires, and an inability to keep their emotions under control enough to resist their now natural urge to turn into a monster--turned from their human form into their spider form. When these tensions bubbled over, and they changed forms, that is to say "all hell broke loose." Even the most patient staff members who were used to dealing with Roman and his antics gave up trying to save the peace, thus they attacked the students in their final attempt to save face under the impression that killing the students would be better for them in the long term than letting the students come to terms with the fact that their upperclassmen and teachers could no longer be called humans and spread that news with the world. From their point of view, it was easier to eliminate the threats to their livelihood and scatter to find new jobs than to risk the entire world finding out about the monsters living among them.

Pepper couldn't bring herself to turn on her fellow students. She felt that to attack her underclassmen was to essentially attack Roman himself.

In her panic, she froze. She froze until she ran. She ran towards the door, but couldn't bring herself to leave, so she hid behind the ramp that led from the lower floor down to the doors.

She hid there until Frieda called out to her.

"Frieda!" she called back, fearing that if she had called out to Roman, she would out herself and her feelings for him.

"Pepper," she cried, rushing down the stairs toward her. Pepper raced up the ramp and met her halfway.

Pepper had never had much of an opinion toward Frieda, but she was glad to see her now, particularly because Roman was with her.

Frieda went to hug her, but Romac caught the collar of her shirt.

"Frieda, she's a spider," he said simply.

"What?" she stammered helplessly. "That's ridiculous! No-Not Pepper!"

He let go of her shirt and let her hug Pepper, but now she couldn't let herself. She stood just inches from Pepper, unsure whether or not it was safe to show her affections.

Pepper looked up helplessly at Roman. It was just as she feared, he hated her for what she was. Her blood was blue, and his was red, and there was nothing to be done about it. If they turned him, he would never be the same, and she couldn't be sure that, for as much as she loved him, she would still love him the same.

She expected to find hate in his multicolored eyes, but she saw something else. She saw indifference.

"I haven't done anything," she stated, hoping to earn his forgiveness.

"Okay," he said, not particularly listening to her.

Roman was a man of ulterior motives, and thus his mind was elsewhere. He thought back to the fish on Mr. Fish's desk. He had to kill the leader of the spiders to "save humanity" or whatever. He didn't particularly care about saving humanity, but he needed to take his revenge, so his best chance was to finish his mission. He'd at the very least gain bragging rights, and he promised he would do this. It was apparent to him now that Mr. Fish was the one to be defeated. He'd have to find him if he wanted to win.

"Um, I need my phone," Frieda repeated, now to Pepper.

Pepper swallowed her feelings and nodded. "Didn't you leave your backpack in the Student Council room?"

Frieda wracked her brain in a futile attempt at remembering anything that happened before the day took a strange turn fifty-four minutes and nine seconds prior.

"I don't remem-rembem... I don't remember," she stuttered.

"Well, you didn't take it with you to the gym," Pepper reasoned, attempting to ignore the way Roman stared blankly at the wall on the other side of the cafeteria, "and I remember seeing it there, so that should be the first place we look."

Frieda assessed the reliability of this claim seeing as it came from Pepper--one of her good friends who never lied--but also a spider. Then Frieda thought of Roman, who similarly never lied, but who never told the full truth if he could avoid it. Between the two of them, her heart always told her to follow Roman, but her brain told her to trust Pepper.

"Okay," she conceded. "Yeah. I want to get my phone."

Roman fought the urge to start laughing again. He followed Pepper and Frieda up the cafeteria steps, through the bloody doorway, and down the hall, all while thinking of the irony that he, who still had his phone in his pocket, had no desire to call anyone while Frieda, who couldn't remember where her phone was, desperately did.

Frieda anxiously eyed the door to the administration hall. The events of the day started there, and passing by the foreboding door made her terrified. As she fought the urge to run, her mind told her to do something she had been doing all day, so she reached out and touched the man next to her.

Roman pulled his hand from her grasp, aggravated that she would think to make a gesture that way in the first place. His memory of the hand holding earlier in the day soured despite less than an hour passing. He mindlessly limped after Pepper, focusing on the hunger in his stomach to distract from the pain in his leg and the memory of Frieda's skin on his.

Pepper opened the door at the junction of the two halls and marched right in. "Frieda, your backpack is in here," she called happily, glad to have something go right today.

Her excitement was short-lived as a wet corpse, soaked in blood, slammed into her, knocking her over.