Black Swan Rising - A Black Butler Fan-Fic

10 - S.O.S. ••• - - - •••

I believed fully in demons, sure. The man I stood beside was a demon, a devil in and of himself. For some reason or another, reapers came to be a bit of a surprise to me.

"You didn't believe in them?" he asked.

I shook my head. "No, not that," I whispered. "I just didn't expect them to look so young..."

"That getup..." mumbled the young man, staring at Sebastian. "Don't tell me you're the rumored Bassy."

Sebastian was a bit upset that someone else knew of such a nickname. "I have quite an aversion to that name. However, I am indeed the Phantomhive family butler, Sebastian Michaelis. You are?"

The man ran his hand through his hair and saluted. He was quite the charmer and rather handsome too. "Reaper Dispatch Association, Collection Division: Ronald Knox," he introduced without hesitation. "Thanks for taking care of my senior."

I shuddered. Sebastian told me of a man who took a liking to him who used the name "Bassy" as a pet name. I came to tease him of the name, but now I was starting to realize the true effect it had on him.

"You just said you can't kill them unless you bash in their heads," Sebastian said, his voice deep in my ear, "but do you reapers know something about the revival of the dead?"

Ronald shook his head, leaning on his lawn mower. "Nope, we don't know any details either," was his response. "Just ... we had reports of corpses whose souls had surely been collected moving around and stuff. So since administration put in a claim saying it was our miss, I came here to investigate; however, this here thing really was a genuine soulless corpse. 'Cause I definitely got Margaret Connor's soul two weeks ago."

The young lord spoke beside us. I peeled my attention from the reaper to the boy. "So the dead don't get revived," he concluded, summarized. "It was just the corpses moving."

Sebastian rested his chin on my head as I turned back to Ronald. "Is it possible for a soulless body to move around?" he asked.

"My bosses said it was impossible, but the fact remains that they're actually up and about like this, so the Reaper Dispatch Association is looking into it too."

I could feel Sebastian go still with thought. He always became so incredibly stiff and motionless when he was piecing things together in his head. "So the only thing you know is, 'If you want to kill it, smash its head'..."

I wanted to facepalm.

"It's not really 'killing' though, just 'stopping their movement,'" Ronald corrected.

I actually did facepalm this time.

Our young master was the only who had good sense in him. "Looks like our only option is forcing Ryan to spit it out," he began, already walking away from the scene. "Let's go!" Sebastian released me gently from his hold at his command and followed him. I tagged along, pulling Sebastian's coat around myself more.

The whirring of the reaper's scythe drew our attention from the door. Sebastian got between us and the machine, holding it with appeared ease.

"If administration gets wind of a demon on board, you betcha' they'll be going, 'Aren't you just hiding the fact that you let the beast snatch all the souls away?' Don'tcha' think that those kinda false accusations will get me into a lot of trouble?" Ronald smirked and pushed hard on the lawn mower in an attempt to kill. He had a mischievous, devilish look in his eye, which was saying something compared to the demon he was facing. "I'll totally pass on overtime, so won't you just vanish?"

Ciel looked around the room and grabbed me by the wrist, pulling me quickly toward the door. "We'll go on ahead!" he told Sebastian over his shoulder. "After you're done playing, hurry up and follow us!"