Chapter Text
Picking Drama as an elective course, Rex had to admit, would not normally be his first choice. Or second. Or third. Look, Rex doesn't act. Acting's for people who can lie, and Rex has heard a lot about lying and has considered sending off for an instructional booklet on the matter, but he's still very much an amateur. Under normal circumstances, he'd give the drama course an approving nod from the other end of a very large room, and they'd continue to happily have nothing to do with each other afterwards. Rex's degree was in Archaelogy, and you didn't have to lie to bits of rock very often, unless you suspected they were going to come to life and start posing riddles at you before they granted access to the Great King's Tomb/Holiday Villa.
Well, he'd reasoned to himself, "drama" meant performing arts, and performing arts meant theaters, and you never knew when you were going to be poking around an ancient theater, right? Maybe he'd find some old manuscripts or something and he'd know at a glance if he'd just unearthed a hitherto-lost masterpiece of the stage, then his drama course'd come in handy.
Rex was dimly aware of the real reason, petty as it was. It was quite simple, really.
Double credits.
Inexplicably, Tantal University's drama course offered double credits for precisely the same number of classes, the same amount of coursework, and, curiously, considerably less reading material than any other course. What was he gonna do, not take the opportunity to coast through the semester with one less class? The two hour lunch breaks beckoned him, singing sweetly of all the extra snacks he could sneak. Who'd turn down a bizarre adminstrative oversight like this? It was irresistable.
Which is why Rex couldn't help feeling a small shiver of cold dread when he'd handed his application forms in, the woman at the desk had flicked over to his course choices, and then proceeded to give him the kind of look normally reserved for a convict on death row. Pity, with a hint of resigned "well, you kind of brought this on yourself" dismissal of his plight.
That didn't seem right. At worst it should've been a "yeah, I see you, you lazy arse" glare at the latest student to bag themselves an early finish on Fridays, not that.
Maybe she just didn't think acting was a lucrative career and was imagining Rex's future as a starving artist. Yeah, sure. Go with that.
Why that face, though?
It had haunted Rex ever since he'd turned his application in, and no amount of mental exorcism seemed to cleanse him of the lingering, frustatingly vague concern. Not fear. Fear would be like if he walked past the lecture hall and a small pool of blood spilt out from under the door to say hello. This was just weirding him out
Rex had asked around afterwards, tracking down as many students as he could, and very few of their answers gave him much reassurance. He'd concentrated on second-year and above students initially, since they might've already taken the class themselves. Most of them had laughed ominously when he'd told them he was taking drama, patting him on the shoulder and saying "good luck" in a sinister tone.
Those who had already experienced all the delights of Tantal University's drama course also patted him on the shoulder, this time with a vice grip, and once again said "good luck," with desperation etched on their face. When Rex tried to ask any of these people why he needed Lady Luck to give him a quick thumbs-up from the heavens, he generally got a variant of "oh, you'll see." He found this unhelpful.
Any fellow drama students shrugged and told him they'd gotten the same reactions. Nobody really knew what the problem was, but everyone knew there apparently was a problem.
Rex found this...hard to believe. He was sure it was fine, really. It's just a university course, after all. He just couldn't help but wonder why everyone around him clearly didn't regard it as fine.
At last, the day had come, though. Ten in the morning, the first Monday of the semester. Whatever lurked behind this plain, grey door in this plain, grey hallway, he was about to face it. He noticed a small sign that had been hastily cellotaped to the center of the door, reading "Drama! Starring Professor Von Genbu," the words surrounded by purple lightning bolts. Underneath, there was a small drawing of a turtle in what Rex assumed was meant to be a king's costume, a speech bubble saying "come on in!" scribbled next to its open mouth.
It was actually a pretty good turtle. Rex didn't know if that made him feel better or worse.
He opened the door, half-expecting to be greeted by a lecturer wearing a turtle shell. Getting a half-empty but otherwise relatively normal lecture hall was almost disappointing to him. A brief glance past the dozen-or-so rows of seats in front of him, towards the front of the hall, revealed there wasn't anybody on-stage just yet.
And it was, in fact, a stage. Which, Rex supposed, made sense for a drama course. It was elevated a little higher than the rest of the floor, with two large, red curtains haphazardly hung on either side, the railing supporting them bending miserably under a weight it was clearly ill-equipped to deal with. There were even a few stage lights, positioned just above the whiteboard. The fact that there was a whiteboard at all was actually the most off-putting part. It rather spoilt the theater ambience the professor had clearly worked so hard to try and build.
So, unusual, but understandable given the context. Rex still wasn't seeing the problem, really.
Lost in thought as he tried to figure out what the problem actually was, he took a seat at the end of an aisle a few rows down, pretty much entirely on auto-pilot. As he sat down, he heard an irritable voice to his right.
"Seriously, dude? Whole row in front of us is empty and you sit next to us anyway? Weirdo."
Oh. She seems pretty mad. Whoops.
A gentler voice, closer to him yet a little quieter, came afterwards.
"Mythra! Don't be so rude!"
Oh. She seems a lot less mad. That's comforting, at least. Still, that other girl didn't exactly seem pleased, and Rex really preferred to just get along with people. Probably best to excuse himself and hop to the next row before she gets any worse. He began to slide out of his chair, already angling himself to leap forward and away from the angry one at top speed.
"Sorry, sorry! I, uh...wasn't really paying attention, I'll just-" he began, the majority of the overlong apology he had planned left unused as he felt a hand tug at the sleeve of his blue hoodie.
"No, no, it's fine, you can stay here. Don't mind Mythra, she's just a little, um...prickly. With new people, I mean," said the gentler voice, closely followed by a grunt of annoyance.
Rex turned to look at the girl grabbing onto his clothes and made a very concentrated effort not to immediately start hyperventilating at her. His entire body shuddered to a halt in the process, but he considered that a pretty good deal.
She was...well, a lot of words. Rex really, really wanted to think of her as "beautiful," but was worried that might be a bit strong for someone whose name he doesn't know and who appeared to have Hatred Herself looming behind her as a bodyguard. Simmer it down, settle for a nice, neutral "pretty," maybe a "cute" if he was feeling particularly daring about this, just don't start off on "beautiful."
She kinda was, though. Short, bright red hair, fluffy and soft-looking like someone had decided that what the world really needed was a sheep whose wool could let it double as a mobile stop sign. Her eyes were a warm crimson, gazing at him with a sincerely apologetic look that belied her kind, caring nature, like he was in front of a gently burning fireplace oh God he was really letting himself get carried away with this wasn't he, okay, stop looking at her eyes. The eyes were danger, move downwards.
This did not improve matters for Rex, as he found his eyes strolling past her unhelpfully glossy, soft lips, curving upwards in a small, inviting smile, as if shegenuinely wanted him to stay and wasn't just trying to be polite about it. This wasso unfair. She wasn't even smiling that much, it was, like, a quarter of the way towards a grin, at best, and he still felt like she'd quietly hired a ghost to wrap an incorporeal hand around his heart and give it a good, hard squeeze.
Her clothes, those can't make things worse, right, he thought, his mind already constructing several elaborate poems about how her thick, light-red sweater only enhanced the aura of incredible warmth and kindness radiating from every essence of her being seriously though how is she this perfect.
Happily for what little dignity Rex could still salvage, he had managed to process all of these very intense emotions within about half a second of gawking at her, so he hadn't just been staring in awe-struck silence for a full minute. Unhappily for Rex, it had disabled most of his higher brain functions, reducing his thought process to "girl pretty" and not much else.
He gave speech an ill-fated go.
"T-thanks," he squeaked out, beginning to lower himself onto the seat with slow, deliberate motions as he tried to remember what "sitting down" was like. The girl's smile widened a little. He promptly forgot how to properly sit down again, flopping backwards into his seat with a dull thud. Good enough, under the circumstances. His extremely pleasant tormentor scootched a little closer.
"My name's Pyra. What's yours?"
"I-it's, uh...Rex," he mumbled. He felt this was perhaps a bit limp, as far as replies went, and bolted on a "It's nice to meet you," to keep things flowing.
"Nice to meet you, too, Rex. Oh, this is Mythra, by the way. She's my sister," Pyra said, gesturing towards her scowling, blonde sibling. Twins, Rex guessed. Mythra basically looked like a long-haired Pyra if she was permanently stepping on Lego and sitting on tacks, which thankfully let him skip past most of the "oh god she's angelic" panic attack. Mythra was pretty in the same way that tigers were. Only from a distance, where you probably won't get eviserated.
Mythra squinted at him and gave him a half-hearted wave, probably as a concession to her sister. He noticed the coffee cup tightly clutched in her other hand. This explained far too much.
"Like I said, don't mind her," Pyra continued, "She might seem kind of...rude. Sorry, Mythra," she said, glancing over her shoulder. Mythra shrugged with dismissive acceptance. "But she's really nice when you get to know her!"
"Not before noon I'm not," Mythra interrupted, taking a long swig of her coffee. Pyra laughed nervously, turning back towards Rex.
"Trust me, she is."
"...If you say so," he replied. He believed her, really. Pyra didn't seem like a particularly good liar, and she was obviously just trying to damage control her sister's thunderingly poor first impression. It was just a little hard to envision Mythra as nice in her current state. He figured dwelling on this was probably a bad idea, though, especially when they actually seemed to be having a half-decent conversation so far.
"So, uh...what're you studying?" he asked, clutching onto the easiest piece of student small talk possible.
"Culinary arts. I want to open a bakery. It's, um...kind of a dream of mine," Pyra said with a self-conscious grin.
"Oh, wow! Can I try your food sometime?" Rex asked, a matching grin forming on his lips. Pyra giggled, her face reddening at his enthusiasm.
"Of course! I need someone other than Mythra to taste-test for me anyway. All she ever says is 'it's good,' and then she asks for more."
"Hey, if I ask for more it means you're doing a good job, right? The hell else am I supposed to say?" Mythra said, tossing a glare at her sister.
"W-well, you could be a little more descriptive! Tell me why it's good!" Pyra protested, shifting in her seat to face Mythra.
"I don't know why they're good! I don't study this shit! That's your field!"
"M-Mythra, don't swear in the lecture halls..." Pyra said, flinching slightly as if Mythra's Very Disrespectful Profanity had actually hurt her ears.
"C'mon, who gives a shit?"
"Well, I do...Besides, you shouldn't say things like that in front of someone we just met. It's...rude."
"I'm sure he'll cope. Right?" Mythra said, leaning to the side to look at Rex.
"Uh...yeah, I don't really mind," he replied, making a mental note to cordon off the cruder segments of his vocabulary around Pyra.
"Well...alright then," Pyra conceded, clearly not happy that Mythra now had a free pass to publically potty-mouth all she wanted. "A-anyway...what do you study, Rex?"
"I'm doing archaelogy. Y'know, studying ruins, digging up historical stuff."
"Oh, that's really interesting!" Pyra said, eyes lighting up, then widening as an idea popped into her head, "Oh! You said you wanted to try my cooking, right?"
"Yep. I'd love to," Rex said eagerly. He was pretty curious about her cooking now. Mythra seemed like she either had high standards or went around pretending she had high standards to give other people a hard time. If she was always saying Pyra's food was good, it was probably amazing. He had to know. Besides, spending more time with Pyra seemed...nice.
"Well, what if we meet up during lunches? I can bring some of my cooking, and you could...well, I suppose you can't bring anything with you, can you? But we could talk about what you're researching!" Pyra beamed with enthusiasm at Rex, "It'd be kind of like a degree swap! What do you think?"
"Yeah, that sounds like fun!" Rex said automatically, before he could properly register that Pyra Was Asking Him To Hang Out With Her and have a minor meltdown. Not that he was going to refuse. It did sound like fun. Just sharing food and talking with Pyra seemed pretty great, judging from what he'd seen of her so far.
Pyra clapped her hands together.
"Great! We can start tomorrow, okay?"
"Sure, sure!" Rex said, beaming back at her. Her expressions were oddly infectious. He couldn't help smiling back at her.
Honestly, now that he was properly talking to Pyra, he was starting to feel far more relaxed, the initial shock of witnessing Perfection Incarnate giving way to the realization that she was...actually just kind of sweet and goofy. Which was better in a way. He could quite happily see himself spending time with her, like they'd just agreed to.
They seemed to get along pretty well, really, like they were feeding off of each other's enthusiasm. Rex felt like they could end up being pretty good friends. That was friends, he told himself, the infatuation slowly swelling inside him firmly instructed to go sit in the corner of his mind, where it wouldn't bother him.
It was absolutely going to bother him. It was going to constantly toss crumpled-up pieces of paper that said "man, she's so nice" at him at every possible moment. He was going to ignore it regardless.
Somewhere amongst his current hyperfixating on Pyra, however, a new thought crept into his head. They'd been talking this whole time without interruption. They really should have been interrupted by now.
"Say...where's the lecturer, anyway? I think the class was meant to start, like, ten minutes ago," Rex said.
"Hm...you're right, actually. I've not seen anyone," she agreed, before shifting back towards Mythra, "Did you see anything?"
"I saw some rustling behind that curtain," Mythra said, barely lifting her hand off her desk as she lazily pointed towards the left-hand side of the stage, "But nobody's come out yet. Dunno what that's about."
"Maybe we should go ask someone," Pyra said, watching the curtain intently.
Out of nowhere, the lights above them dimmed, eliciting a small yelp of surprise from her. Just as the lights dimmed and reached pitch blackness, a loud, exaggerated laugh rang out across the room. It did not bear much resemblance to a normal laugh. Rather, it was clearly being delivered by a man who had spent a lot of time thinking about how best to use his laughs to make as cool and mysterious an entrance as possible, every "HA" stressed to breaking point to maximize the impact.
The spotlights perched precariously above the stage lit up, angled towards the left.
"My apologies, everyone! Had a spot of trouble getting the lighting set up, and, well, that just wouldn't do, would it? HOWEVER: I! AM! HERE!" bellowed the unknown voice. And "bellowed" was definetely the word.
As far as Rex knew, most lecturers used microphones to compensate for the size of the rooms they typically taught in. Whoever this was clearly needed no technological enhancement to his iron vocal chords. He was doing this au naturale.
A figure emerged from behind the curtains, arms spread wide as though he were waiting for some applause to bask in. He was...oh God, what was he? A tall, muscular man with messy gray hair.
That...should've been all Rex had to notice about him. Unusually buff for a university professor, maybe, but, hey, maybe he grades papers with one hand and lifts weights with the other, totally plausible. He should just be another middle-aged guy in a sweater and some jeans, like most of the male professors he'd caught glimpses of here, even if he was a little on the younger side. Mid-twenties, probably.
Why was he wearing that trenchcoat, then. That's not what professors wear. They do not come out in front of their class in a giant black trenchcoat that's opened as wide as it can specifically around their chest to show off their acres of finely toned muscle. They are not supposed to have far too many belts tied around their waist, with a few more curled round their arms for some utterly baffling reason. Oh God, fingerless gloves, too. Sure. Why not. May as well.
And then there was the eyepatch. It was possible that he really did only have one eye. Some instinct inside Rex told him that this man, without a doubt, had both of his eyes. There was no way he didn't. Nobody who walked out like that as if he's expecting bouquets of roses to come sailing his way any minute was wearing an eyepatch for legitimate medical purposes.
The fashion apocalypse strutting around in front of Rex continued his speech.
"My fresh-faced new proteges, allow me to introduce myself! I am Professor Zeke Von Genbu, Bringer of Knowledge and certified Drama Lord! For the rest of this semester, I'll be your guide through the marvelous world of the performing arts! But let me warn you, chaps: art is, and always has been, humanity's mirror to the soul- we face our demons, we envision our angels, we...sometimes become our demons, depending on the story! As such, this course will push you to the very limits of human emotion, as we explore the depths of true art! Your lives will be changed forever once Zeke Von Genbu is through with you!"
Somewhere under the din of the neverending introduction, Rex heard a chorus of confused murmuring around him, alongside occassional muffled snickers. A quick peek to his side revealed that Mythra had dispensed with any subtlety and was openly howling with laughter, tears streaming down her face. Rude, but not a wholly unreasonable response.
Pyra, on the other hand, simply watched in captivated silence, a pen fiddling and twirling in one hand while the other tightly clutched a notebook. Where Mythra, and most of the class, were seeing a bizarre man in a trenchcoat ham his way through five acts of thrilling soliloquy on the nature of Drama Itself, Pyra was seeing pearls of wisdom freely dropping out of his pockets with every new proclaimation. She was completely taken in by...whatever it was he was doing.
Whatever it was he was continuing to do, relentlessly ploughing ahead with his monologue.
"But enough idle chatter, my friends- it is time...to learn!"
Rex was very sure this was a lie. Zeke immediately proved him right, continuing to speak even as he walked towards the back of the stage.
"Now, Zeke Von Genbu has always been a great believer in learning by doing..."
His hand reached out behind the left curtain and the lights were gradually adjusted back to their original, Pre-Zeke brightness.
"...And I've also always taken great stock in the old saying, 'all the world's a stage.' And it just so happens I'm standing on one as we speak!" he concluded, stamping his foot on the wooden floor beneath him, just in case nobody had figured out it was a stage yet.
Dread crept up beside Rex and asked if it could sit next to him for a bit. This did not bode well.
"So, for our first lesson, why don't we have a little crash course, chaps? Let's see those acting chops in action!"
Yep. There it was. As those dark words were spoken, the chatter and ever-present chortling ceased in an instant. Laughing in the face of death would take a braver lot than this class.
"Now, don't think I'm going to ask for volunteers, everyone! Oh, no, no, the Zekenator's far too sly a dog for that! I'll be picking you out personally, let's say...two at a time. See if you can get a bit of chemistry going, eh?" Zeke threatened, eye already scanning the room for his first two victims.
Rex took another look to his right. Mythra had lowered herself further down into her seat with the miserable expression and hunched shoulders of a woman who was currently wishing she could nail herself to her chair. Pyra had the excitable smile of a small child watching a play that's just reached the bit where they ask for audience participation, but who has not yet realized they are part of that audience.
As much as Pyra's earnest interest was kind of cute come on dude don't start down this road again, Rex had to agree with Mythra. This was...mortifying.
But, there were, like, fifty people in this room. The odds of him getting picked were pretty low. Even if Zeke's fickle finger of death- which he was currently waving from group to group like he was a roulette wheel- landed on them, he might just make Pyra and Mythra go up together. Rex had a really good chance of getting out of this. Or, at least, of not having to go first. He'd be fine.
"How about you two!?"
"H-huh? U-us?!" squeaked Pyra.
"H-huh? U-us?!" squeaked Rex.
"Oh my God, never do that again," Mythra muttered, her pleas unheard as they both babbled out excuses not to come up.
"Yes, yes, you two! My Eye can tell...you are destined partners! On the stage, and in life! Now, come forth, and show us what you've got, chums!"
In that moment, Rex understood everything. Every look of sympathy. Every "good luck" uttered with the utmost sincerity. Every empty seat in the hall, telltale signs of a low attendence rate.
This class was not a blessing to his schedule. It was a curse.
Oh God, what had he done?