27 – Hunter’s first real day of work goes about how one would expect

The morning Hunter decided to finally show up for his new job, he was in an incredibly good mood.

He'd gotten to have breakfast with his daughter, who seemed to be doing well and was not only happy he'd come to this world but was willing to (since the Temple had advised them to keep their relationship a secret) travel through creepy catacombs just to eat pancakes with him.

On top of that, he'd gotten his magic back. No more ankle monitors, no more being constantly watched by perverts, now he had his apartment all to himself except for when his kid or the cat were visiting.

With this in mind he hummed under his breath as he headed for the administration building, ready and willing to become a kind and benevolent boss all his employees would love as he squinted behind his sunglasses against the too-bright morning sunlight.

A small storm had blown in overnight, only to vanish by dawn, so all that was left of it was steam gently rising off the walkways and leaves strewn about like soggy confetti. He paused at the door to scrape a few of them off the soles of his shoes, then automatically opened and held the door for someone who was coming out, only for them to freeze in place when they saw him.

After an awkward pause, they mumbled a breathless, “Thank you,” and scurried off like they were afraid he might chase after them.

... Well, he hadn't expected that becoming a kind and benevolent boss would happen without a little time and effort, so he shrugged this off and stepped into the building.

Now that all the students and employees were back it felt far livelier than it had before. Chatter filled the air, bouncing back and forth across the stone walls, and people in all sorts of strange clothing with all kinds of colorful hair hurried about. It felt kind of like walking into a big box of crayons, and privately Hunter felt he definitely preferred this energetic atmosphere to the solemn silence from before.

Alas, some of that energy faltered as people began to notice his presence. As he strode into their midst, they scattered away from him like a school of fish reshaping itself around a shark, and an intrusive thought started urging him to run at someone just to see what they’d do.

Resisting it, he sternly reminded himself that he shouldn’t hold their rude behavior against them. After all, their original boss was a genuinely terrifying person, and they had no idea he’d replaced her. Plus, he’d only made the decision to come in last night and, aside from Chiron and Anemone, he hadn’t bothered to inform anybody. He’d never been a big boss before, but he’d been an unscrupulous employee many times, and believed he was far more likely to stumble upon something interesting if he showed up without any warning.

As though to confirm that thought, he’d only just exited the stairwell to the top floor when he was greeted by a woman’s high-pitched, indignant shrieking.

“That heinous little BITCH!”

He paused and looked down the corridor, calmly removing his sunglasses and putting on his eye patch as he observed the distant altercation.

“SHE DID THIS ON PURPOSE, DIDN'T SHE!?”

… Hmm.

That woman wasn't referring to him, was she?

“Where the hell is your mistress!? I don’t care if that vulgar harpy’s injured, I want to speak with her right now!”

Oh, damn. She probably was.

Softening his footsteps, he headed down the mostly deserted hall. Here and there people’s heads poked out of adjoining rooms, watching the spectacle, but they slipped away like startled garden eels the moment he passed by.

The dispute itself was happening on either side of the head secretary's desk, which was arranged like a bulwark in front of his office. Anemone was on one side, shielding a heavyset man with her body as she squared off against a richly dressed woman on the other. Standing a step away from the rich lady were two men who looked like hired muscle, and who Hunter immediately pegged as useless amateurs, because instead of keeping an eye on their surroundings they were absorbed by the show.

Here and there a few other people hovered awkwardly in the periphery around the fight, unable or unwilling to leave, and their expressions implied they had no intention of getting involved.

“My Lady, this man’s employment has nothing to do with the President or you.” 

“BULLSHIT! Do you think I’m stupid? First your mistress insists on keeping that odious little vixen, and now you’ve brought in her dog of a brother as well!?” the woman screamed back, strands of dark purple hair from her intricate updo going astray with every punctuating slap she landed on Anemone’s desk. “It’s personal! How can it be anything but fucking personal!?”

The man behind Anemone mumbled something Hunter couldn’t hear, then reached for her shoulder and gingerly tried to pull her behind him, but she just shrugged him off and refused to move.

Enraged by this, the woman swiped her hand across Anemone’s desk, sending her things crashing to the floor in a clatter as she screeched, “Just admit it! She’s out to get me, me and my daughter! You’re all in on this together, you’ve been in on it from the start!”

“My Lady, I assure you the President has been incapacitated all week! The Kitchen Manager is the one who posted the listing and performed the interviews, our office had no part in it!” 

“If that’s the case, then you shouldn’t have any qualms about firing him!”

“I told you, I don’t have the authority to make that kind of decision!”

For the first time the big man behind Anemone spoke loudly enough to be heard, saying, “Lady Stratonice, please, your quarrel is with me, don’t take it out on—”

“Damn right my quarrel is with you! I warned you what would happen if you didn’t leave the state, yet here you are, like a cockroach, forcing me to step on you again and again!”

With a menacing laugh, she waved her hand at the goons behind her. “Well, I’m sick of it, so you’ll be coming with me.”

The three of them advanced and Anemone, still trying to protect the man behind her, stumbled back against his chest. Lady Stratonice pulled her hand back as though to hit Anemone while her henchman attempted to flank the big fellow from both sides—

Only to find themselves interrupted as a dark blur of motion lashed through the air, grabbing each of the three by their mouths.

From there the black ectoplasm coiled snake-like down and around their bodies, binding their arms and legs in quick succession.

“Okay,” Hunter said from behind the group, “That’s enough of that.”

He’d hesitated to intervene earlier in the hopes of figuring out what the hell was going on, but sadly, he remained absolutely fucking lost.

Still, if there was one thing he’d learned since coming here, it was that thinking like a civilian just wouldn’t cut it anymore. With that in mind, when it looked like things were about to get physical, he let himself act on instinct.

It just so happened that ‘instinct’ in his new body’s case meant summoning a bunch of ectoplasmic tentacles from his spine.

While he couldn’t deny their utility, his brain seemed to regard them exactly like normal arms, which meant that even though he could use them intuitively, there was still a part of himself that felt kind of shocked by the situation.

It also didn’t help that his new captives, whose only current method of communication was frantic wriggling, seriously objected to his decision to wrap them up. Though he could sympathize with their distress, having recently been tied up by ectoplasm himself, they were getting on his nerves fast. While his tentacles were considerably stronger than his actual arms, there was a limit to that strength, and with their feet bound together these three were only still upright because he was working hard to keep them balanced. 

Then one of the more energetic goons violently flailed backwards and began to fall. Hunter, realizing he couldn’t stop it, decided to cut his losses and yanked all three of them to the floor, receiving a chorus of muffled grunts in response.

Dragging the three of them together into a neat bundle, he grew a few extra tentacles to give them a quick search, removing any accessories that looked like they might cause him trouble. 

Meanwhile, he asked Anemone, “Head Secretary, are you alright?” 

Anemone, bless her, seemed to be the only person in the hall who was openly relieved to see him. Gently extricating herself from the big guy’s arms, she straightened out her dress and answered, “I’m alright, President. It’s good to see you back, but… are you sure you’re feeling well enough to be here?”

“Yeah, I’m fine, it’s just—fuck, will you little shits cut it out!?”

Despite being tied up and on the ground, Lady Stratonice’s henchmen hadn’t stopped struggling, so Hunter had been slowly constricting the three of them tighter. Unfortunately, he must have squeezed too hard and triggered a hidden defensive artifact, because intense heat surged from the embroidered cuff of the woman’s sleeve without warning, causing a portion of the tentacle affected by it to swell violently before popping like a grotesque balloon, sending ectoplasm splattering across the floor.

Since he could only detect pressure through them, the experience looked far more painful than it felt. However, since his brain couldn’t discern the difference between disposable tentacles and actual arms, he felt an instinctual burst of panic as one of his ‘arms’ was partially destroyed.

Snapping his fingers at the goons, he angrily barked, “Either you two settle down, or you get to watch me rip this lady’s filthy tongue out and shove it back up her ass where it belongs. Which’ll it be?”

At that, the two of them finally elected to sit still.

With a disdainful click of his tongue, he focused on repairing the damaged tentacle. At the same time, he couldn’t help but think that he finally understood why Iphis had tied him up with ectoplasm instead of ropes. The substance was incredibly flexible, could be re-grown and re-distributed easily, and being able to phase it through himself and his clothing gave him a lot of freedom of movement.

He resolved to apologize for calling Iphis a pervert for using them, or at least he’d try to, assuming Iphis was ever willing to talk to him again. 

“Anemone, who the fuck are these mooks?” he asked, and then, realizing that there were still random folks hanging around watching, he made a circular motion in the air to implicate all of them and said, “The hell are you all still standing around for? If you don’t have a reason to be here, scram!”

That sent the majority of their audience hurrying away. Anemone sidled closer to him and covered her mouth, whispering, “This is Lady Stratonice, Second Wife of House Epirus, and, uh… some gentleman she brought with her. Do you recall the, er, ‘incident’ she was involved in last year?”

While the woman’s name and appearance did ring a faint bell, those memories had a familiar demonic slipperiness to them, so he quickly gave up.

House Epirus, however, he recognized without issue. According to Ianthe’s memories, they were one of the noble families active in the cult, and their patriarch was among the names Hunter had recently shared with the Temple.

However, he couldn’t clearly recall whether or not Stratonice herself was involved in the cult or just married to the man who was.

“No, I don’t. Should I?”

“That… well… I suppose you could say the event was complicated, but the important thing is that Hyacinthus was not involved.” Anemone reached out to pat the big guy who was still standing there looking awkward. “His, um… sister, however, was.”

“Uh-huh,” Hunter said, finding it rather suspicious that a woman as proper as Anemone had been casually touching on this guy the whole time. “And this ‘not involved but his sister was’ is someone we just hired?”

“Y-yes…” Anemone replied, her eyes darting to the side as she removed her hand from Hyacinthus with a guilty expression, her freckled face flushing the same shade as her coral hair. 

Taking a closer look, Hunter observed that the man in question was built like a double door refrigerator with a square jaw, even squarer shoulders, and arms like steel girders. His dark, slightly wavy blue-purple hair was cut short, but despite his intimidating size he had a gentle face, the most striking aspect of which were his dark brown eyes. Something about them lent him an air of almost tragic harmlessness, as though even if violence might save his life, it’d never occur to him to try.

Looking between Hyacinthus, then Anemone, then Hyacinthus again, Hunter privately guessed that hiring this fellow had way less to do with Stratonice and way more to do with the fact that he looked like a zaftig¹chubby Clark Kent, but he decided not to call her out on that.

“I should have mentioned it to you earlier, I know, I apologize,” Anemone continued nervously, wringing her hands before herself. “But you were hospitalized, and one of the kitchen staff this week was a no-show, and you know how busy they are…”

Hunter pinched his eyebrows together and sighed.

He couldn’t say he was thrilled at being pulled without any warning into whatever this was, but either way he looked at it, Stratonice was still in the wrong for trying to kidnap an innocent hunk from his office. 

Anyway, he had a good idea why the kitchens were short a hand right now, and even if he hadn’t been involved in that murder, he hadn’t warned them that one of their staff had ‘quit’ either.

“Head Secretary, you’ve already called security, right?”

Anemone sheepishly nodded.

“Okay, then… as for you,” frowning, he turned his attention back to Lady Stratonice.

She glared up at him from the floor, her mouth still covered by ectoplasm and her garnet eyes bloodshot with strain and fury. The powder on her pale face couldn’t quite conceal her exhaustion, and her high-end outfit was disheveled, although… that last part was probably his fault.

Comparing how wealthy she looked versus her henchmen, the more he thought about it, the more wrong this combination felt. Even if she was a second wife, she was still part of a noble house, so her escorts should have been knights or trained guards at the very least. The fact that she was being protected by these nincompoops implied that she either couldn’t utilize those resources, or that doing so would cause her trouble, or…

As he leaned in closer to inspect the goons, he noticed that the more he tried to make out their faces, the more blurry their features became. At first he thought something was wrong with his eyes, but then one of them tried to shift away from him and he spotted an almost imperceptible line of dark magic connecting the guard to Stratonice.

Damn, no wonder these two were so weird.

They were being possessed by ghosts.

As this realization sank in he belatedly went, Oh fuck, ghosts!

Then, almost immediately afterwards, he got over it.

Compared to being possessed by a demon, incompetent ghosts didn’t feel like that big of a deal, especially since he’d gotten his magic back. If anything, he felt more excited by the discovery than frightened.

Now that he knew what to look for, he grabbed a hold of one of those dark strings and gave it a tug, making both Stratonice and her guard jerk in surprise. Intrigued, he pulled on it harder, even pinching experimentally at the blurriness over one of the goon’s faces as he examined the magic behind it, simultaneously ignoring the man’s increasingly frantic convulsions.

Huh. At first he’d been thinking he might try to exorcise the ghosts since he hadn’t had the chance to play with much necromancy yet. However, judging by the nature of the magical contract connecting them, these guys had familial ties with Stratonice.

While he certainly didn’t like this woman, he couldn’t be sure she was a cultist yet, so stealing her relatives’ spectral remains felt like going a step too far.

Plus, from what he could tell, neither of the guards involved were struggling at all against their possession, which implied that they’d consented to the situation. While he’d never be willing to do that sort of thing, he figured it wasn’t his place to judge how others made a living.

With that, he let the ghost’s face and the strings go, and both the guard and Stratonice slumped over in relief. All three of his hostages were now staring at him with considerably more terror and disgust than before, and he assumed this was probably because he’d just rudely pinched the heck out of Stratonice’s grandpa or something. 

Falling into a crouch, he regarded the three of them and quietly explained, “Hey, I’m gonna level with you here, I got my brains scrambled recently so I’m not entirely sure what’s going on yet. Honestly, if I didn’t think it’d spook my secretary, I’d drag you into my office right now and start breaking fingers until one of you told me what kinda bullshit you're up to. However, since I’m in a good mood, I’m thinking of letting you off with a warning instead.”

Hunter reached out and grasped those little magical threads again, pulling all three of them towards him, and whispered, “Consider this your only warning: if any of you mess with me or my people again, I will hunt you down, and I will fuck you to death. Do you understand me?”

He wasn’t sure if they nodded because they understood, or if it was just because they really hated it when he pulled on their strings, but he decided either result was close enough and let go. 

Lucky for him, four campus security guards finally showed up right as he finished, so he promptly handed this problem off to them.

“Get rid of these idiots. They’re banned from my campus, and if they try to start a ruckus again, message me and I’ll deal with them.”

Unlike the kind of security guards he was used to, the university only hired seasoned mercenaries for this sort of job, so he had no doubt they could handle this lackluster trio. Still, thinking it wouldn’t hurt to make their task easier, he set about severing a few of his tentacles in order to keep the troublemakers tied up.

This wasn’t a huge issue from an objective standpoint because any ectoplasm he lost could be regenerated over time, so he’d simply have less to work with for a while. However, the process was still pretty uncomfortable because once again his brain insisted that he was essentially trying to pull his own hands off, and it desperately wished he fucking wouldn’t. 

Thankfully, Ianthe had a lot of experience repressing that feeling, so he managed to do it anyway, and coincidentally felt like he’d once again gained accidental insight into more of Iphis’ strange behaviors.

As he watched them get hauled off, a very meek Anemone tugged on his sleeve and asked, “President, I… I haven’t caused too much trouble for you, have I? You don’t think she’ll report this, do you?”

“Eh, don’t worry about it.”

If Stratonice was stupid enough to try and press charges, so what? From what he remembered, the Kastri Guard played pretty fast and loose when it came to actually enforcing the law, so in the worst case scenario he’d probably just end up paying them more bribe money.

In fact, most Cydonians openly considered punching down socially acceptable, especially among the nobility, so if she tried to make a big deal out of it publicly she’d probably end up being the one criticized.

Then again, there was always the chance she might try to get revenge on him directly, but… if anything, that sounded kind of exciting?

Covering up a yawn, he was about to ask Anemone if there was any coffee, then realized that the office wouldn’t have any. Frowning, he reached for a cigarette instead, only to pat his pockets and realize that not only did he not have any, but he wasn’t allowed to smoke even if he had.

Feeling a little irritable, he asked Anemone, “Hey, you got any candy?”

Anemone, like the responsible secretary she was, promptly reached into a drawer in her desk and got him a lollipop.

Unwrapping it, he paused to wonder if the urge to put food on a stick was some kind of multiversal human constant, decided it almost certainly was, then stuck it in his mouth.

It didn’t do much for either of his cravings, but it did taste like strawberries, so that was nice.

“Hey toots, you mind explaining what’s going on?”

Anemone exchanged a look with Hyacinthus and he quickly retreated. Then, keeping her voice down, she explained to Hunter, “Last year at an off-campus party, Lady Stratonice’s daughter claimed she was chased down with a knife by another girl, who then tried to, um… drown her in a canal.”

“Okay, that’s… pretty intense. Uh, I’m guessing that other girl would be Hyacinthus’ sister?”

“His sister was the accused, but she was elsewhere during the attack, with impartial witnesses.”

“So you’re saying she was falsely accused?”

“Well, yes. In fact, at the time, she was recovering from a severe injury and could barely walk, much less chase someone.”

Hunter, his Agatha Christie senses tingling at this sudden twist, quickly asked, “Then why was the victim convinced the other girl was the one who attacked her?”

“Well, they’d had a prior conflict, and… at the party the victim attended, some experimental substances had been imbibed…”

Hunter clicked his tongue, feeling disappointed by this boring conclusion. “So you’re saying she hallucinated it?”

“That’s what the official investigators decided. No one else saw the girl there, the victim didn’t actually have any of the knife wounds she claimed she’d received, and… while it’s terrible that she nearly drowned in a canal, considering what she was drugged with at the time, it’s more surprising that she was able to survive at all.”

“Well, I can see why her mother’s so angry,” he muttered, although he still didn’t think that justified trying to hit his secretary or abducting his brand new kitchen hand. 

“Indeed! Truly, I felt for her then and I feel for her now, but Lady Stratonice has always refused to listen to reason! Back then she demanded we expel the accused girl, and she got all sorts of other people in on it, other parents, alumni, even the papers… oh, my La—I mean, President, it was a horrible mess, but you—you handled it beautifully.”

Raising an eyebrow, Hunter said, “I did, did I?”

“Oh, yes,” Anemone nodded, clasping her hands in front of her chest as her starry eyes sparkled with unabashed hero-worship. “You were so brave, standing up in the face of all that pressure just to protect one of your common students! I swear, my Lady, I’d never felt so proud to serve you in my life!”

…

Ianthe was many things, but a defender of truth and justice? 

Hunter didn’t buy it.

It was far more likely she’d taken that stance because she hated being told what to do, and interpreted Stratonice’s demands as a challenge to her authority. That, or she’d just wanted to make Anemone happy, since her secretary was the only person alive she gave a shit about.

However, the filter Anemone viewed Ianthe through was so thick that, even though he was currently in Ianthe’s body, Hunter doubted he’d be able to persuade her otherwise.

“… So, with all that in mind, while I was out sick, you decided to hire the accused’s brother without letting me know?”

“No! Well—I, I mean, I didn’t hire him, I just sent him the listing once it was posted,” Anemone explained, her bright green eyes cast down in contrition. “I’m sorry President, but you've already helped them so much, I didn’t want to ask you for more, especially not while you were recovering… I was going to bring it up with you today, but Lady Stratonice must have heard something somehow, and… and I know you must be upset, but…”

Anemone took a few steps back, then grabbed the big man’s arm and clung to it in such a way that Hunter half expected her next words to be, ‘but Father, I love him!’

Contrary to his inner fantasies, what she actually said was, “He’s a good man, I swear it! He only moved here to take care of Alecto after her injury, but every time he gets a job Lady Stratonice intervenes, and he can barely afford a place to live anymore…”

“Okay, okay, I don’t need the whole sob story, I get it!”

Why was he getting this star-crossed teen lovers shtick²comic performance from his forty-something secretary? Wasn’t this supposed to be Euphy’s script?

Then again, maybe he ought to just be grateful that these two were both adults.

“Look, I’m not gonna rain on your good deed, just give me an earlier heads up next time, alright? And for the love of God, don’t start crying again. I swear I’ll fire him if you cry over this.”

Anemone, who’d been getting increasingly watery-eyed, quickly bit her lip and steeled her expression.

In response, Hyacinthus gently patted her with one huge hand.

“Alright, well, mazel tov³have good fortune, you two,” Hunter mumbled, mentally adding, You’d better fucking save me a seat at the wedding. “Hyacinthus, I take it we’ve already met?”

The anxious, double-door refrigerator of a man nodded, and Hunter decided against offering him a handshake. As rude as it felt to him, doing so would just terrify this already nervous fellow further, and if he fainted there probably wouldn’t be any way to stop Anemone from bawling, much less any way to carry someone that huge to the infirmary.

“In that case, I’ll just say it’s nice to meet you again, and that you can call me President.”

“It’s an honor to meet you a second time, President. Thank you again, for everything you've done for my family, and I apologize for the trouble I’ve caused today,” Hyacinthus replied in a low and timid voice that matched his gentle face perfectly.

“Don’t worry about it. What brings you up here, anyway?”

“Ah… my employee ID…”

“Oh, right!” Anemone chirped, rushing to rummage through the pile of things Stratonice had wiped off her desk. Retrieving two little packages, she hurried over to hand one off to each of them, saying,  “Pardon me, but Hyacinthus, this is your ID, you’ll need it to access employee-only areas. President, this is your… well, not your ID exactly, but…”

Hyacinthus pulled his ID out of the package, revealing a small pin engraved with his name and job title. There wasn’t any photography here, so the university relied on mana signatures to identify employees, and Hyacinthus quickly infused the pin with his own.

Hunter unwrapped his little package to find not a pin, but a pendant. On it was inscribed:

Hebe of Kastri

Chief Executive Mouser

With a laugh he clapped Anemone on the shoulder and said, “Oh, this is great. Chiron’s gonna love this.”

Anemone’s face implied that she expected otherwise, but she nodded anyway, happy that Hunter was happy.

“President, you’ve got a meeting soon with the deans about the academic plan for the upcoming semester. Would you like to head there now?”

“Yeah, yeah… wait, hold on, two things first.” Snapping his fingers at Hyacinthus, he pointed and said, “Get this guy a panic stone and link it to me and campus security. Heck, give one to his sister, too.”

“President, are you sure?”

Panic stones were common defensive artifacts designed to look like little gems or beads, and were often worked into jewelry. When crushed, they activated a spell that signaled another party for help, and the residue they left on the skin was both easy to track and difficult to remove. 

They were also stupidly expensive to make. It would have been more cost-effective to just give this guy and his sister a handful of diamonds, and technically the panic stones the university kept on hand were only ever meant to be used for its yearly expeditions.

However, since he was the big boss now, Hunter wasn’t going to let something little like rules and regulations get in the way of his whims.

“Quick question, Anemone: what’s the chance someone like Lady Stratonice might be open to kidnapping or murder?”

Judging by the unhappy glance Hyacinthus and Anemone exchanged, his concern wasn’t completely unfounded.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Just do it, if they don’t end up using ‘em they can just return them later, what’s the harm?”

“Alright,” Anemone agreed. “What’s the second thing?”

“What’s up with that pipsqueak and the beefcakes?”

Even though most of the initial spectators had left at his earlier command, a tan-skinned teenager of indeterminate gender and two big twins in uniform were still waiting outside his office. While the twins had been politely pretending not to see anything, the kid had been watching with wide lavender eyes this whole time and now, accidentally making eye contact with Hunter, they shrank back into their chair.

Following his gaze, Anemone said, “Kid...? Oh, you’re referring to the Hyperborean Prince? He was sent here for your mentorship.”

Hunter blinked a few times and idly gnawed on his lollipop.

Before wrapping things up with Calliope, he’d asked her if he could take part in Prince Damon’s punishment. Rather than propose anything violent, he’d suggested he arrange a mentorship with the Prince so he could guide him back onto the straight and narrow, and maybe put a little fear of the gods in him along the way. After he’d sworn not to actually hurt the guy, Calliope had agreed to set it up if possible.

He just hadn’t expected her to move so fast. Or for the Temple and the Prince’s royal parents to toss the kid over without so much as a word.

Then again, being mentored by the future Duchess of Aeonia wasn’t a bad deal for a brat who might end up an Emperor depending on how the fight for succession shook out, so maybe nobody had seen any reason to refuse.

Still, he couldn’t help but think…

Really?

This was the twerp who’d tried to set his daughter on fire?

To be honest, he’d been expecting someone more along the lines of a high school quarterback with a severe case of affluenza, not this gangly, baby-faced dweeb.

He was pretty sure his daughter could knock this guy out with one hit.

… Maybe he should ask her later if she wanted to?

Waving Anemone off, he left the lovebirds behind and headed over to the Prince. Putting his hands on his hips, he looked down at the kid and said, “Hey, punk, how old are you?”

Surprised by this question, Prince Damon stared back at him in wide-eyed confusion and didn’t say anything.

Putting his ‘dad’ voice into play, Hunter demanded, “Hey, I’m asking you a question, how old are you?” 

Flinching at this tone, Damon hurriedly blurted out, “Nineteen!”

Unimpressed, Hunter just kept staring down at him without blinking.

“… I, I meant eighteen.”

Hunter continued waiting and Damon, slowly but surely crumpling under the immense paternal pressure Hunter was exuding, tugged nervously at his long light blue hair and sullenly mumbled, 

“I meant, I’m… almost eighteen.”

At this, Hunter raised an eyebrow, and the Prince bristled in offense.

“I’m telling the truth! I’m seventeen, you can ask my knights.”

He looked for confirmation from the uniformed twins, both of whom gave him simultaneous and expressionless nods.

Well, at least this kid’s henchmen were higher quality than the last bunch.

“Okay, buddy, do you know why you’re really here? Do you get that what you did the other night was wrong?”

Damon didn’t reply, but his eyes reddened and he hunched his shoulders like an angry hedgehog, now refusing to look at Hunter in favor of sulking at the floor.

“Oy vey iz smir⁴woe is me,” Hunter groaned under his breath, putting a hand to his forehead.

Either teenage wasteland here had always been this pathetic, or Iphis’ little death loop had done a number on him. 

It wasn’t like this was the first time Hunter had dealt with a ‘troubled teen,’ first because he’d been one and second because Euphy seemed to befriend them almost exclusively.

However, he already had a lot on his plate, so adding this kid on top of that made him really feel his age.

“Alright, look… you can call me President, you’ll be spending some time each week working with me from now on,” Hunter said, crossing his arms in front of his chest. “Any questions?”

Damon hesitated, pursing his lips, his aura of youthful resentment now disrupted by curiosity.

“Earlier, what you said to those people… Would you really fuck them to death?”

Hunter nearly choked on his lollipop.

Fuck! This kid had overheard that? But he’d been speaking so quietly!

Damn it, he’d forgotten body enhancement magic was a thing, hadn’t he? 

How many other people in this building overheard that? Hell, even if it was only this teenager, did that really make it any better? 

Hunter used to hang out with guys who talked like that, but it’d been a very long time since he’d talked like that. It was just that the scenario earlier, where he’d been tying people up and threatening them, felt so nostalgic that he’d unconsciously slipped back into that old mindset, and…

He wasn’t an easily embarrassed person, but right now all he wanted to do was find the nearest trash can and crawl into it. Instead he tried to suppress a sudden twitching in his eyelid as he forced himself to explain, 

“No, it was just a threatening metaphor. Actually doing that would be gross.”

Undeterred, Damon immediately asked, “What about her tongue? You said you’d rip it out and—”

“Of course I wouldn’t, nobody uses ‘shove it up your ass’ as a threat literally!”

Well, that wasn’t entirely true, but he wasn’t about to explain that to a teenager.

No, more importantly, why were these the questions he was asking!?

“Then, would you really have broken their fingers?”

Bending over to put his hands on his knees so he could get eye-level with the little prince, Hunter hissed, “Kid, I’m starting to get the impression that nobody’s ever taught you when to keep your mouth shut. Why would you ask me that? Do you actually want to know? Then yeah, I woulda broken their fingers, and if they really pissed me off I’d do a lot worse than that because I’m not a good person, which seems to be obvious to everybody here except you, so why are you pushing your luck with me?”

Damon, who’d been pressing himself further and further back into his seat as Hunter spoke, muttered, “A… ghost boy told me to…”

Hunter took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a second, desperately gathering the lingering shreds of his patience.

“… What ghost boy?”

“The one from my dream,” Damon continued in stunned disbelief, and then added to himself under his breath, “But I didn’t think you’d actually admit it.”

“You don’t do a lot of thinking, do you? Then again, someone who thought before they spoke probably wouldn’t have been dumb enough to attack my—attack a divine mage, now would they?”

Damon ducked his head again, his expression petulant yet guilty, and this time Hunter responded by giving his forehead a sharp flick with his fingers.

“Ow!” the Prince hissed, flinching and covering the spot with his hands.

Both of his black-haired knights flinched along with him, and one of them grabbed the prince protectively by the shoulders while the other sternly rebuked Hunter, “Don’t touch the Third Prince.”

Hunter ignored them and continued addressing Damon. “Look, I don’t have time to deal with your bullshit right now, so Head Secretary Anemone is going to tell you what to do, and you’re going to treat her orders as my orders because if I come back and find out you didn’t I’ll be very upset, and you don’t want to make me upset, do you?”

For a moment it seemed like the Prince might try to refuse, but Hunter’s sinister face must have convinced him to reconsider because instead he bit his lip and turned his head away, darkly muttering, “Fine, I understand.”

“Good,” Hunter said, and with that he left the Prince and his knights behind and went to rejoin Anemone.

By now Hyacinthus was gone, her desk was put back to rights, and she was waiting for him with a thick stack of folios clutched to her chest.

“President, these are the most recent versions of this semester’s plans. I took the liberty of marking an, uh, ‘area of interest’ for you.”

Nodding, he took one of the folios from her and began to flip through it as they walked.

He found what she’d mentioned at the very end, alongside some notes she’d taken in bright red ink, almost as though she feared he might miss it. 

Finding the existence of this information offensive, he snapped the folio shut with a sigh and followed her into the executive conference room. It was a wide, sunny space dominated by a dark, solid wooden table. A row of tall windows took up the biggest wall, the stained glass decorations at the top of them throwing colorful shapes of light across the room.

Hunter paused by a window, the sunlight feeling pleasantly warm on his skin, and looked down at the bright campus as Anemone bustled about distributing folios and making tea.

“Will you need anything else, President?”

“Yeah, that note you left me… you already got anybody on it?” 

“Yes, I reported the situation to the Provost yesterday. Is that alright?”

“It’s fine, I’ll connect with him in a minute. Thanks for looking into things.”

With a final farewell she left, and he reluctantly forced himself to open the folio again and glowered down at yet another new piece of trouble he’d been handed.

Why couldn’t this job just be easy?

… Maybe he needed to start beating people up?