30 Jitters

She approached the crowd of students in the centre building to the building courtyard. It's big enough space to fit all the students of the school to stand in rows at arm's length. There are some flower beds along the window walls and the odd stone stumps used as outdoor summer seating. This gathering was all to a large stone that had been placed as a sort of stage or more seating. There is already an elite student in uniform standing, posing proudly of themselves. There is this sort of boasting of feats for why they are granted the teaching assistant position. There are many in the dark, and this was all misinformation.

Lea stands at the very back of this crowd, obverse about which students she could poach and what the big deal is.

"Mr Davies, get down from there." One of her reptile creatures made itself known and put the child in place, "If you are not here to join the evening class, hosted by her. You are not welcome to be milling about." The creatures have already given out papers of the bullet points, "I am doubtful we will have any more than three or four humans this year. Weak ranks among this lot." A shook of disappointment, "A thing can dream."

"Auntie!" Samantha waved from the crowd and Lea softly rolled her eyes. She attempted to step past but the students don't care for her. She didn't have the height or aura to command them. Even still Lea makes progress in smooth moves and got about the middle of the crowd. She was then pushed by others that were pushed too. A fight breaks out. The lizard finds the bickering amusing and has no way of stopping humans from fighting humans. She got up on her own since none offered to. She checked her outfit and was gladly not in official uniform. She claps time to pause and with better ease appears up onto the stage stone. She claps return time, but importantly attention forward to her. She doesn't seem to have anyone's attention but a few. Some are even waiting for the lizard to tell her off. The fighting between students was contained by friends and pulled the sides apart. She sighed disappointedly.

"None of you are fit enough to take entry. If you hear my voice right now, you will have to try contacting me another time. All human students are to go back to their places. I give you no permission to use me as some petty excuse." Her voice is speaking as the dead do. Given the way the voice reaches them, it doesn't create a sound that was heard by living ears or waste a breath, "I have only 3 expectations. If you hand in your sheet with your written notes about those places, you can stay. If you have a question about the type of class it will be, stick around. Lastly, you are just waiting for me anyways, I need to stay here for a moment. Please just wait." Posed a left hand in counting the numbers but her lips haven't moved. Some think she is just possessed and others think she's a joke. She not even wearing elite underwear, a fresher no less.

"Ah, you must be my supervisor." The boasting Mr Davies. Lea took out a lace black fan, and with her right hand (poses her embarrassment for his incompetent assumptions). The boy didn't take the hint at all while those that study or know a few undertaker gestures knew exactly. This prick went to come to step up to the stone and is met with the stomp of the reptile. It made it clear to not impose on her, that it was under her mercy. The quick snapping of the fan open and closing was a bark at the reptile and the boy.

"This gathering is dismissed. We will be doing this trial again, this Sunday. Questions will be written on the back of the directions. Any remarking notices of each place is welcome at the space provided on the front. I will be heading to my room momentarily." She stomps her foot in good measure at the end of speaking like this. That works in the disbursement of everyone heading into the dorms. The few trouble seekers lingered but clear stiff glares shuffled them. The added measure was that the Tutor was at hand signing in the students into the dorms for night lock. She glares at the lizard who bows to her and it faded off. She was near the moment to get down herself when she spotted an approach from Nathan. He posed giving her one of the papers and held a certain respect for her suddenly. Or it's a bluff to prank her? She posed the fan neutral and takes the paper with her left hand. Whatever curse just backfired on his friend nearby, a kid out from the flowerbed and crawling over other students waiting for some big entertainment.

"I don't know if I want to know why you choose your friends. You sure teach them to be a leading example." She reads the answers, "I see that none of you cares about joining the level gold advance class. Under my care, you could be taking silver-grade sigil contracts. But no. You just want to be mirror scumbags to the American baboons over the pond. I am not holding judgment on you, Nathan. I understand why the sword instructor has hope for your sister. You have room to improve and grow." She rolls her shoulder, "Besides, you can't beat a Trickster at her games. If you want to become my target of entertainment, you going to have to do a better impression of making it worth the effort." She made shadow fold the paper in her left palm. When she throws it, the paper wedge flew past Nathan's shoulder and through stabbing the heart of some unwelcome business. He felt his cheek and looks over his shoulder to where that landed, watching the fall of Ash pile on the floor and a paper dagger crump itself in untouchable flame, "Do your answers on a paper next time or talk about things with me over dinner. I will make time for you when you ask of me. I don't always need to be a human face to stare at you." She opened and waved the fan, telling them to buzz off, "I am happy to teach you to talk like the dead do." Using her natural human voice, "I will show to blend in among them while on visiting. The laws to be considered and the risks of ranking up with sigil applications. The ranking is not universal in all realms. Undertakers and demons don't even rely on the system. It wasn't set for living humans." She forced him to take his arm and drags him, the last to get their buts into the dorms. Made him sign first because she locked the entry with her pass. Given he didn't know she was an elite student, he looked pale in how her card worked.

"You left the Monarch?" The tutor in sheer pale worry, watched the strugglers taking other doors or that other elite student with key cards unlocking the door behind Lea.

"It will be fine. Spirit people will have to learn that we living people can't just put a pause to what is happening in the living world, that opportunity is slim chances during many moments of life." She signs in with only her instils and passes over the registration to the next person, "His majesty monarch can wait for his candle and pouch dust order another moment." She rolls that fan with ease, "I don't envy the role or its many responsibilities."

"Is this why you're a shadow Duchess?" Je asked in a casual tone possibly where everyone else looks stupid with hearing. That a new fresher from lower school is already an Undertaker ranking Duchess. Being a ranked Duchess would mean she runs a department for the Monarch or has a service to provide.

"The key part of that title is Shadow. I am not publicly known nor do I bother managing a known logistic part of their realm." She opens and closed the fan, waiting to change the topic, "Big day for everyone. New students need to get a move on, and it's reasonably late for the other students too." The remainder shuffled those to continue with the stairs and others to quickly finish writing. The last sign-in is the elite students from the student council. They have already swept the grounds to make everyone be where they are meant to be this where they should be. The glares are shot of the lower rankers that aren't in the know and the push of those that do making them scared.

"The student lounge is open." A passive-aggressive reminder to have meetings. She hasn't even been there yet. The tutor posed to show the way and Lea ignores it.

"I have to get changed and sort some stuff first." She sighed, "I meet any spirit students or visitors there soon since it was the last entry on my warm-up test."

"Here, the one she means." The partner gave the tutor the paper, "The living had a censored version." The student lounge is a spirited stop. The theme of her entry test was sort of clear, the grey areas where living and dead could hypothetically accidentally not recognize each other. The lounge is the last stop on the spirit side and it was where she intended to meet the rest of the student council.

"The rogue shadow Duchess of the material plain." She ignores the stranger on her passing to her room. As she has many times before, cleaned up and changed to be more formal for evening sits in the student lounge. Especially since her spirit business seems to eclipse there. Once she was back from her room, wearing the uniform correctly. She did accept a letter by a left hand from the waiting being. It faded away.

"A formal sigil invite." She didn't even need to work out where from, living world material and felt within the printed paper. She holds her fan open, hiding her expression as she enters the open room of rugs and sofas. It's slightly 80's maybe. The floor and walls are bland brick and wood. The rugs are set with a table and chairs around them. There is a corner with an L-shaped sofa, packed up with lower-ranking students. A couple of seats facing the entry has one person drinking tea from a home brought mug. There was a little setup of a hot water urn and a student brought in coffee, sugar, and tea bags. No cups are provided (it's assumed that you bring your own or share with others).

"Ah, what a day! Sorry for the wait." She slides herself into the standing cloaked folks hovering about an empty table. She follows only using her left hand to tap or point. She would make her opinions known at the shut of the fan. One by one a spirit is gone and left behind is an undertaker that pointed her to the monarch. She knocked the table surface, it seems anything left there disappears with her magic tricks.

"You do realize that there are no hard feelings between us." She seems as if continuing her conversation from the school café, "It's no clean slate but it doesn't need to be. I worked hard at being where I am and I realized my mistakes. Gladly I am just a living human, unlike you. I have the time to rewrite my options." She sits across from him, "If I was someone like you, with some lost living human fallen on my lap. Bloodline of some problem people. I get it. At the time, making a pawn out of me was a smart move. You might be screwed in the long run. The failed execution was perfect timing with time reversal." She holds herself so straight and calm. It was her living voice but her depth of tone never wavered. She sounds pleased even.

"Fine, so you are not unaware." He lowered his guard and sits back relaxing, "You taking a forgiveness route."

"Oh really?" She tilts in just making sure his not lost his smarts while she was gone, "You stooped entering your private office in fear of being burnt by the liquid, or were you scared of what was waiting for you?" He now sits back forwards, "Not in my choice, I am still, and in a way returned to being, the keeper of the index. The idiot after and before me did some nasty work to all those names. Now. Now the books have picked up some of the sorts of energy and powers I had obtained while my soul wasn't here in this universe." She straightens her head in watching his trembling hands, "I am not your pawn but you aren't my enemies. I understand and can see the justification you took to reach the many choices that you had in my previous encounters." She softly bows, "We are just neutral allies for now. We exchange favour for a favour. We don't keep tabs on the stuff. The larger picture or the move of souls is where matters. I have become taught and determined in the many pocket realms. My reach for the abnormal and broken things has outlasted time itself." She closed the fan and no longer hides her face, "So Mr King, what sort of service are you enquiring upon me? To what general label are you painting it? A court? a lizard? a name?" She closed her lips and then used her other voice, "Are you here to play some mind games, or is there something at stake that you need me to help you with?"

"This is the last end of the court case. That the tricksters have won money compensation from a fraud court case." She lets the thoughts swim around for a long time while he puts down a candle.

"Oh! I didn't sell that candle." She picked it up instantly, "Wow, I can't believe this thing still has wax. This one of the many candles in a private collection." She smells it and smiles as it brought memories, "I remember that smell. That place." She treasures the candle, even how she held it with both hands, and glimmers an emotional human response from her, "I can't make this one again and I stopped making such types of candles a long time ago. This doesn't have my logo but instead, my living name at the time was carved into the wax bottom." She puts it down, "The entire collection was exploded, lost. I don't think I will be expecting to receive any problems from candles that were destroyed in that incident." She clearly remembers with how her shoulders sank and the sad frown following it, "My undertaker portrait door was badly damaged from the same thing. The house collapsed. Reality seems to wipe away the building that stood there. It never came back. Nor did I go back to living in that part of the UK." She crossed her arms inhabit, "The black market for my lost private candles isn't my problem. They are no longer mine. All of them were meant to be destroyed."

"I see..." Someone collecting the candle back, "I guess I should just ask on. Private candles?" She smirks.

"Yes. I use to make candles in memory of people, moments of my life and other things. My private candle collection wasn't to be used for anything else. Just me to evoke memories or to let me recall dreams." She has a soft smile thinking how big it was and just how many candles she made, "But it was my partner and once weirdo stalker that told me. He said my candles would collapse the universe." She shook, "He wasn't wrong. I was sourcing the materials from other realms." Rolls left shoulder, "It doesn't matter now. Those candles are gone. I will not be making them anymore. They will be too potent now. I was weak then. Now... My candles don't need to be lit to ward off things. I can't have my special candles remade if they become more potent than they need to be." She waved off her left hand, "30 of those candles summons doorways. All 30 candles were gifted to tome keepers of the specialist subject realms. Lost candles."

"and those were weak candles?" His voice cut off quickly. He held back from saying more.

"Yes, Shock. Those were weak candles. They were never meant to be more than that. The smell and colour were all it had to be. Pretty candles that meant something to me." She rolls to recline, "I stopped counting how many I had and I stopped trying to work it out too. When that life and everything collapsed, I let go and choose to move on. I no longer needed candles to remind me of the worlds and names."

"You already obtained enlightenment or something?" He was all nervous for sure or just negative. She was quite enjoying it too. How he was squirming in the seat and that the rest of the living world was moving on, ignoring her. Those in earshot had no real sense of what the deal is. Too much of the conversation was insider known. To uniquely of their subject.

"Let me put this in simple term for you to work with." She claps into putting them to paused time and now she stands over him, "I have no power over you as you have nothing over me. You have your duty. I have many of mine. We happen to know each other, no debt and no silly revenge plans. I am a separate entity that had its own realms and watches over things. Just as you are a king for undertakers, God's for humans or Demon archduke over hell scape. We don't own what we watch over, simply we watch and guard it." She forms her mask to appear, "I watch over the broken. That is what I do. I don't own them. I sometimes help where it is possible and conveniently able to. That is what I am." Her mask is covered in breaks, metal to hold it together and has a constant flowing drip of liquid about it, "This is my real mask, this is how I am." She holds over her living face but not wearing it, "Do you have enough information to stop making pointless enquiries?"

"I don't understand, and I guess I will never do so. Its not your need to educate me." She lets the mask go and it hovered in the air inches away from her face, eyes looking down on him, "We are just folks that trade and work exchange of favors." She softly sits down, mask stays at aligned to her face from the gap distances she made, "The candles were lost, no longer your responsibility and thus voiding the court cases around them if the blame directs to you." She used her lace fan to indicate he wasn't wrong, "What of your ex-partner?" She definitely held a pained expression.

"I don't know how he is. I don't know what happened to him. Where he is. I fear that my influence could have broken him or made him fall. I hold no hard feeling to someone that was your command, following orders. I still in some way, still want to wish to trust him. That my life is still in his hands, that I could wish to save him if he wanted to."

Monarch Shock isn't shivering anymore, rather to hear her so much equally in worry for someone like that. To want to trust a man he held so much for. The title of King held in need of such a guy. Her words were like grace. A prayer of hope for otherwise an isolated hell.

"I would like to reinstate him back, but I needed to know what you assumed." The trembling is gone, wipe away all that negative energy. Just a spirit who looks like a doll staring back at her. No emotional human expression.

"I will hope I meet him again." She goes to clap at returning time. Some other person beats her to unfreeze. She straightens up with sitting, facing no one. They are gone now. She makes her mask disappear. She stays still deep into her many thoughts, she looses some composure in getting lost in memories and shook out of it, she was ready to face the way humans enter the spirit stage. This was how she should have been entered into the undertaker realms.