Chapter Text
Giving multiple cans of beer to a hyperactive woman like Don Quixote is hardly a good idea. Especially if she passes out in front of her strange situationship-addled genius girlfriend. That isn't fun. Naturally, Rodion avoided taking the blame for this. After all, being interrogated by Faust with her icy stare isn't amusing. Well, it might be for Quixote, but in this case, Rodion is not her. But, she is still a sinner. So, as per usual, she's going to take advantage of this situation in the worst way possible. And thus, she decided to hatch a silly little plan.
Rodion clasped her hands together, declaring boisterously, "Now that we're all gathered up, let’s hold the first meeting of… The G.F.Q.T Council!"
Sinclair meekly spoke up. “…What does that acronym even mean?" Ryoshu huffed and blew out a puff of smoke directly in Sinclair’s face. Everyone went silent except for Ishmael. She simply groaned and face palmed.
“G.F.Q.T… B.S.” She stated bluntly. Sinclair suddenly seemed to be able to translate the words in his head, perking up once more. “Ah! It’s ‘Get Faust and Quixote Together’…? I’m not sure about it being… Bullshit, though.”
Rodion sighed and looked at the collection of Sinners she had gathered up. So far, she had Hong Lu, who joined in frivolously (“Haha. If that’s what you’re doing, I don’t see why I shouldn’t join~”); Sinclair, who was guilt-tripped into joining (“Um! Well, I don’t want either of them to be upset…!”); Ishmael, who, well… (“Tsk… Don’t expect me to help— I’m just…” She trailed off); Heathcliff, who was forced in (“Oi, don’t involve me in this romance shite! Seriously!”); Meursault, who was simply asked to; Dante, who begrudgingly joined (‘I don’t want you guys to do something irresponsible, so let’s just do our best…’); Yi Sang, who joined without being asked (“Healing trials of the soul are ideal for strengthening the bonds between us.”); And finally, herself, Rodya! What a quaint team they had. Aside from that, there were a few spectators watching, like Gregor and Ryoshu, who sat smoking on the sidelines, as well as Charon who observed curiously from the driver’s seat.
Hong Lu beamed, tranquil as ever, and turned to look at Rodion, "So, do we have a plan?"
She merely stared back at Hong Lu distantly, "..No, but that's why we're here~ To come up with one!" She declared, flippant.
Rodion was quick to dodge when a chunk of a seat came flying at her. "Bloody hell, you tossers didn't even explain why I'm here, of all people!" Heathcliff glared at Rodion, who giggled nervously. “Ah, wait, wait, no need to get so violent over it! I have it under control, see?!”
She got a large spread of parchment paper, seemingly out of nowhere, and smacked it firmly on the ground. She tossed colored markers to everyone, and announced, "Alright, everyone! Let's write down our ideas on how we can get Quixote and Faust together!"
Rodion was quite excited. Dante sighed, or rather, it looked like they did— their shoulders slumped slightly. You can't really sigh if you've got a clock for a head. They spoke (or ticked?) with what was likely an exhausted tone, ‘Why are we doing this again? Should we really be interfering with their love lives?’, to which everyone ignored.
The Sinners were idly writing or drawing things, sans for Heathcliff, who just stabbed the paper multiple times whilst thinking. Ishmael blatantly clicked her tongue at Heathcliff’s work, “You’re terrible at this. Can’t you commit to the bit, now that you’re in this… Thing?”
Heathcliff snapped his head towards Ishmael, snarling, “Shut it, lass. You aren’t enthusiastic about this either, you know? Look at yourself, you’re all sulky and shite. What, ya jealous of Faust?”
“Don’t even start right now,” Ishmael gritted her teeth, growing increasingly frustrated with Heathcliff’s incessant banter. She stood, briskly walking over to Heathcliff, gripping her mace like a vice.
“Please cease,” Yi Sang, surprisingly, spoke up, “Refrain from fighting. It is painful to see allies snap their jaws at each other once more. It would be more efficient for us to ruminate over our given task.”
While that was usually true for most things that occured on the bus, given that their current ‘task’ was trying to get Faust and Quixote to date, his interjection felt a little piddling. However, it was enough to stop Heathcliff and Ishmael from baring their fangs and ripping each other apart, so it ended up being sufficient after all.
Eventually, after much thought (which was, in reality, around half an hour of writing miscellaneous things onto the shared paper), they had filled the page. As for what each sinner wrote…
Rodion wrote at the very top, ‘The Ultimate Plan to Get Faust and Don Quixote Together!’, in neat cursive, alongside a few dot jots, reading as such:
- Get both of them drunk and then lock them in the storage room together!
- Get only Faust drunk and throw Quixote at her? (Beside that, in small writing in green marker, read “What is that supposed to do…?”)
- Make everyone go out to karaoke and then pretend everyone has something they need to do so they’re the only ones left! (In orange marker, etched onto the page, sat writing below the note— “Faust wouldn’t do karaoke.”)
Everyone else had written similar things. In a cyan marker, ‘Let’s hold a banquet for them to converse~♪’.
In neat black, a note read, ‘Create an environment for them to speak to each other naturally— it is not wise to interfere with delicate matters of the heart’.
With a purple marker that was drying out, sullying the would-be neat writing, ‘Lock ‘em in the bathroom and let them go wild, I reckon’.
In a deep blue, there was a neatly written paragraph detailing the course of courting between humans that rattled on for quite a while, but ended up being fairly detailed but barely helpful.
And in the corner of the page, in a scarlet red, sat the words ‘I think it should just happen naturally’.
Rodion stared blankly at the page. This… Was terrible! “Ah, seriously, who wrote this? ‘Don’t interfere’? C’mon, you can’t tell me it isn’t painful to watch Chiquita stare at Fausty with those big, longing eyes! Right?!”
Hong Lu put a finger to his chin, feigning thought. “Well, it’s not necessarily wrong to say. Sometimes it is better to just see where the wind takes you…”
“Not you too, Hong Lu! I thought for sure you’d be one of the people to back me up!” Rodion whined, upset at the devastation that was her attempt at forcing cooperation between a portion of the sinners. Hong Lu merely gave her an apologetic, ‘it can’t be helped’ smile.
“I guess there are always people that enjoy watching this kind of thing,” Hong Lu’s eyes narrowed slightly, a glint in his jade eye that belied some other sort of intention. “Haha. Well, it’ll technically be more ‘fun’ for others to interfere.”
Ishmael’s expression grew stormy and troubled as she listened to Hong Lu’s words. “Oh, I’m interfering all right. Just not in the way you’d like. You guys seriously don’t actually believe that Quixote’s into Faust, right?” Her gaze flitted around the crowd hopelessly, “Right…?”
“Why the hell did you join if you think the lass wasn’t into Ms. Genius?” Heathcliff raised a brow with crossed arms, clearly lost at Ishmael’s muddled reasoning.
“Haa…” She exhaled sharply in disbelief. “You’re not the type to care about romance at all, so why do you care, either?” Her words were pointed and accusing, clearly beginning to get riled up again.
Sinclair looked between the two helplessly, “Please, stop fighting…” Yi Sang nodded solemnly in agreement, but did not appear to add further input as he had previously during their last squabble.
“Can you guys not right now? It can’t be that hard to go a few minutes without arguing, can it?” Rodion sweat dropped, scrambling to get the team back together.
That was, until, Charon suddenly spoke up. “Vroom vroom. Speeding up fast.”
Huh? But the bus wasn’t moving…
Then the door at the back swiftly opened, revealing none other than Faust herself, with an inexorably energetic Don Quixote trailing closely behind.
“Ho! Is that… Verily! I have spotted… A trial for the most hardy of teammates?!” Quixote tried to peek at the paper, but Faust languidly stopped her, peering down at the sheet with no expression in particular.
“It is highly advised that you refrain from ‘shipping’ sinners together,” she spoke plainly, to the point and unfeelingly.
Ishmael’s brows furrowed, “Shipping? Like, delivering something in a shipping container, that shipping? What does that have to do with-“
“I- It’s a literary thing!” Sinclair abruptly squeaked out. As he saw all the eyes on him, he continued slowly, “It’s, like… Pairing two people together. In this case, Faust and Don Quixote, romantically.” His words were hushed, in a lukewarm attempt to have his words heard by only those in the group. However, with Don Quixote’s sharp ears and Faust’s… Faust-ing, they both managed to crisply hear Sinclair’s tentative explanation.
They were all so, incredibly screwed.
“Forsooth, it is a ‘derivative work’, nay?! Hahaha! I have long awaited the day to have ‘fan fiction’, penned arduously in my name! Many thanks, young comrades!” Don Quixote puffed out her chest, either ignoring the fact that the so-called fan fiction was about her and Faust, or she perhaps simply latched onto the thought of having her exploits written out and embellished, as she tended to like. “Ahem… Prithee, do make sure that I, as the children speak, have much aura!”
Dante held their clock-head in their hands, in clear distress based on the train honk that emitted from them. ‘This has gotten so, so out of hand…! We really need to stop.’
Rodion face palmed, before she wearily spoke up. “Okay, okay, geez! I can explain.” She narrowed her eyes sternly at Quixote first, “Chiquita, listen. Your yearning for Faust is real obvious, so I need you guys to get together.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?!” Heathcliff barked, before Ishmael had him in a rough headlock in an attempt to shut him up. Even so, he continued, “What was the damn point of writing out that whole list, then?!”
Decidedly ignoring Heathcliff’s wrath, Rodion went on, “C’mon, Donqui. We know you have it in you.”
Don Quixote went silent, her expression not wavering from her earlier beaming. “I am afraid I do not comprehend your words, young Rodya!”
“Haa… Here, I’ll put it clearly for you.” Ishmael discarded Heathcliff on the ground before storming up to Quixote and jabbing her in the chest. “You,” she glared, before pointing to Faust, “Are infatuated with her. Got it?”
And it seemed the beast had been unleashed, as Don Quixote’s face went bright, neon red. “Wings alighteth, Ishmael, NAY!” Her voice was loud as she quickly denied Ishmael’s accusations.
Ishmael winced, “Okay, damn, I get it. No need to blast my ears.” She shook her head, regaining her bearings. “Who cares if you’re into women… I’m judging you for being into Faust, though.”
“Though Faust esquire is a beauty of a high specimen, as radiant as a twinkling diamond and as pure as a stream on a crisp spring day, she is not a subject of the affections of mine!” Everyone went silent at Don Quixote’s declaration, giving her an ‘are you serious?’ look.
“Blood rushing to the face and an increase to the heart’s BPM are natural signs of embarrassment or lying,” Meursault said curtly.
Rodion barked out a laugh at his sudden words, “Hah! Thanks for the info, Meursault. See? There’s no denying it now. You’re totally head over heels.”
Faust’s gaze remained as emotionless as ever, but it seemed more ominous than usual— like something dark was looking over the sinners. “Dante. Faust suggests that you order this to stop.”
‘Eep… Uh, okay. Guys, you heard her… Let’s stop,’ Dante pleaded weakly, less of an order and more of a polite request.
A few of the sinners groaned and dispersed at Dante’s reluctant command, shuffling back to their seats, but there was still a number that lingered, out of curiosity or some other interest— that being, Ishmael, Heathcliff, Sinclair and Rodion.
“Tch. Good luck trying to pull, lass,” Heathcliff shot Quixote a thumbs up, before plopping himself right back into his spot.
Ishmael gave Quixote a longing glance, “Don’t fuck this up for yourself.” She turned away coolly.
Sinclair fiddled with the hem of his gloves, giving Quixote a small smile, “If you want, we can go back to our seats, now…”
Rodion crossed her arms and sighed, “Plan foiled. And I was pretty hyped up, too.”
Faust briskly walked over to her seat, not sparing anyone even a fleeting glance, except for Don Quixote, to which she stared hard at the shorter woman’s eyes.
Don Quixote fell quiet for a long moment as she met Faust’s stony gaze, before regaining her usual smile, “Of course, young Sinclair! I would quite like sitting down, you see, because my head seems to be throbbing in a deep pain!” As she skipped off with Sinclair at her side, she wondered faintly, if she truly did have a chance with Faust.
Well, if she did have a chance, she likely messed it up the second the other sinners tried interfering… And now, they had on their hands, a horrible hangover in the Mephistopheles.