Twisted Wonderland | Mickey's Print

5. The Print

To the four boys' surprise, the headmaster was there in the Mirror Chamber upon their return. Yuu thought he was waiting for them, but he dismissed that possibility entirely as he realized he was looking at them with the same bewilderment as them. "Mr. Crowley," he called out to avoid prolonging the silence. "Here we have the magic crystal."

To emphasize the meaning of his words, Deuce stepped forward and extended both arms with the crystal. The headmaster blinked a few times as he took the crystal and realized the situation. "Eh?! You really went to the Dwarfs' Mine to find the crystal?"

"What!?" Grim and the three young boys asked in confusion the same way.

"Of course we did, sir..." Yuu answered. "You told us yourself, remember?"

"I really didn't think you were going to go, much less come back with a crystal... So I gave myself the freedom to finish the paperwork for your expulsion," he confessed with a slight embarrassment in his voice.

"What?!" Yuu asked in dismay.

Ace and Deuce just looked at him in horror before frowning in annoyance.

"What?! The nerve of this guy!" Grim exclaimed angrily as he slid out of Yuu's arms. "And you did it while we were risking our lives with a monster out there!"

Crowley didn't expect that statement either. "A monster?" He asked with interest.

"There was a monster there!" Ace explained with the same anger as Grim. "It was really scary and super strong, it was awful!"

"Could you explain this in more detail?" The headmaster asked. "Let's go to my office, there we can talk more comfortably."

The man led them into a large room adorned with a long purple carpet and large purple curtains with green figures in the shape of stars and moons. What most attention attracted were some floating portraits of the Great Seven, the same ones represented in the statues on the main street of the school.

He sat in front of the desk there and put the crystal on the surface. Then Yuu, helped by Ace, Deuce, and Grim, explained everything that happened in the forest and the mine: the apparition of the monster, the elaboration of the plan, and their fight against it to obtain the crystal.

The headmaster did not divert his attention at any moment. "Oh. So a mysterious monster was living in the mine. And the four of you worked together to defeat it and bring the crystal here?" He summed up.

"That's right, Mr. Crowley," Yuu stated as he picked Grim up again.

"We didn't really work together..." Ace insisted with a bit of embarrassment.

"It was more like our goals were the same..." Deuce added, feeling the same way.

"Guys, are you going with that again?" Yuu reproached them. "You've admitted before that we worked together!"

The boys' faces reddened slightly, but before they could say anything else, Crowley began to sob slightly before bursting into tears. The others exchanged looks of discomfort and confusion. "What's wrong with this guy now?" Grim asked, breaking the silence. "Why is an adult crying like this?"

Crowley tried to regain his composure and wiped away his tears. "In all the years that I have been the headmaster... To think that the day when some students from Night Raven College would go hand-in-hand to face and defeat their enemy together would come."

"What!? I did not hold this guy's hand!" Deuce exclaimed in horror and pointed at Ace with his thumb.

"I would never do that, that's disgusting!" Ace exclaimed. "But headmaster, how old are you?"