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"So," She leaned down over Pomeline who was working on her assignment, "Do you think I can get Damian Wayne to join my Serpents & Spells team?"
Pomeline threw an aggravated glance up at her, leaning back with an annoyed sigh, "There's absolutely no way you can get <i>the</i> Damian Wayne to play your lame nerd game." It was a quiet retort, careful to not aggravate Mr. Scarlet.
"Bet," She challenged back, her chin jutting forward with conviction, "We totally made a great team when we had to fight you guys off when you had the bird flu!"
"Thanks for that, by the way," Pomeline rolled her eyes, leaning further back in her chair and crossing her arms.
"And Serpents & Spells is not lame! You get to fight monster and cast spells--" She continued on before Pomeline cut her off.
"Besides you're not even friends and don't have any way to contact him? His PR team probably handles thousands of fan messages a day, they're not going to care about some girl who went to school with him for one day asking him to play a stupid game with her?"
Ouch. But Pom had a point, a point which Maps had already considered and had made the perfect plan for!
"Well... that's true..." She leaned back, pretending to think for a second, "But aren't your parents like rich? Don't they know Bruce Wayne? You can just ask your parents to pass the message along to Damian's dad!"
Pomeline rolled her eyes, "I know this isn't something you scholarship kids understand, but my parents are nowhere rich enough or have the status to even be in the same room as Bruce Wayne, let alone know him personally.
Oh. She hadn't even considered that.
Well, then, time for Plan B!
"Okay, then! I guess I have to go train some pigeons on how to deliver messages! Wayne Manor's not that far from here, it can't be too hard for them to fly there!" She turned around, beginning to think where the most pigeons congregated on campus.
Did Gotham even have pigeons?
"Oh, and remember, club meeting this Thursday at ninteen hundred!" She walked backward, shooting Pom finger guns. Pom just waved her off with an airy, blue-blooded hand.
So, it turns out that it's harder than she thought to catch pigeons. The crows, on the other hand, were way easier!
She's been luring three crows to her dorm window which she's named Harbringer, Cataclysm and Peanut. Peanut is an absolute fiend for cheese.
"Ok," she crouches down on the floor, holding out a little folded up note to Harbringer's claw.
"Can you grab this for me, Harbie? Pretty please? I'll give you some pistachios~"
Harbringer cocked his head, looking at her with his beady black eye and grasping the paper with talons.
"Good boy! What a good boy!" Maps cheered, opening up her palm to reveal the treats inside.
"Okay, Peanut, now it's your turn!" She gently took the note from Harbie's claw, standing up to where Peanut is perched on her desk chair.
"I'm going to get you guys delivering messages in no time!"
Okay, so it turns out that crows, while trainable, cannot deliver to messages to people they don't know. Peanut did kind of manage to figure out how to deliver messages... sometimes. It was always a 50/50 shot if Olive or Kyle would get the note.
However, she now had a super cool trio of crow bodyguards that followed her around! Of course, Headmaster Hammerhead had to ruin that by banning all birds inside school buildings.
PE was fair game though! Mr. Humphreys hated them with a passion but also seem scared of them so he didn't bother her, which was a win in her books!
It sucked for Kyle though, having him as a coach! The swim and dive coach for Gotham Academy was pretty nice.
So, she couldn't get a message out to Damian, she resorted to more desperate measures.
"Please, please, please, join my SnS team Olive!" She cried, getting down on her knees, "Eric refuses to join!"
"Absolutely not," Olive shook her head, "I already agreed to joining the swim team for you! Why don't you ask Kyle or Coltan?"
"Kyle's like super, duper boring! He always chooses the lawful, good paladin route and my party already has one of those! And Colton's already said no!"
"Sorry, but no. I draw the line at swim and that's only because it's kind of fun!" Olive shook her head, beginning to pack up her stuff.
"Come on! You won't know that you'll like it! It might just be like swim!" Maps grasped despairingly at her hands, like wraith. Olive shook her head, walking away with a final swish of her skirt.
Ugh! There goes her dream of having a Detective Duo in her party!
She's outside, hanging in the gardens, detailing the strange motif around the base of the fountain when a dark shadow falls over her.
Tipping her chin up, she sees a dark figure and familar pair of green eyes!
"Damian!" Grinning, she scrambles up, "What are you doing here? I thought you were expelled?"
"My father's here for some business with Hammer so I decided to take a walk, revist my old school grounds. It's nice to see you again, Mizoguchi," He tucked his hands into his pockets, turning to look out over at the chapel and East Hall.
"You were only here for a day though?"
"Nonetheless. It, um, made an impression." His face darkens, turning towards the ground. Is he sad that he got kicked out?
"I see you are still surrounded by portends of death. Have any other magical sticking together happened since?" Damian asks, curiously not meeting her eye.
"Oh no, these are my crow bodyguards! This is Harbringer, he has a talon missing on his left claw. There's Cataclysm, the one missing the eye. And here we have Peanut, the really round one! I tried to train them to deliver messages, but it hasn't gone so well... Peanut will sometimes deliver messages though."
"Actually, I was meaning to ask you! Do you want to join my Serpents & Spells party? It's actually the reason why I tried to teach crows how to deliver messages, because I had no way to reach you and what better way than my own personal mailing system?" She rambled, feeling herself get more embarrased the more she talked.
"You tamed some crows to try to invite me to a game...?"
"Yes...?" She squeaked, feeling her cheeks flush red. Ugh, that sounded crazy! "I just thought since we made such a great team last time, we would be great at Spells & Serpents!"
There was a moment of silence, before Damian nodded,
"I'd like to try this... 'Spells & Serpents'. If you went to all this trouble, I might as well see what it is about."
"Yes!" She grinned, wanting to give him a hug but aborting the movement. "You'll love it! It's the best game in the world!"
"So, how'd you like your first session?" Maps asked as they walked towards the entrance of the school where Damian's driver was waiting for him.
"It was... interesting," Damian said, his face stonier than granite. Whenever Maps tried to make eye contact, his eyes slid away like eels trying to hide in a poreless rock.
They walked on, only their steps echoing in the tall hallways.
"It's okay to say, you hated it, I'll understand. It's not a game that's for everyone!" She broke the silence, reassuring him.
"I don't hate it." He tried to defend himself, before Maps shot him a look.
"Well, it's... I don't get the point of it."
"You knew the rules before you came here! You didn't even check over the manual once!" She ticked off on your fingers, "You looked like you hated every second of it! So you probably knew that you wouldn't like SnS before you even started."
"It's totally okay to say that you hated it! I'd rather that you don't play a game you hate! I really don't get this whole broody, stoic, suffer-pain-for-the-greater-good thing you're trying to do here because it's just painful for everyone involved. Like, why would you even try to continue your own suffering?" She thought aloud, trying to figure out what Damian's angle here was.
"I, uh, thought we made a good team." Damian's cheeks flushed before he turned his head away. Didn't hide the burning tips of his ears though! "I thought it would be.... pleasant to continue exploring such... teamwork."
Oh! Ohhh!!
"If you just wanted to hang, you should've just let me know! We can do lots of cool stuff other than playing SnS! We could break into the weird crypt or go exploring the tunnels or try to figure out where the Batcave is!" She bounced on the tips of her heels, slowing to a stop as they came to the door.
"How about next Friday, five o'clock? We can try an escape room? My treat, of course." He smiled, the expression making his already handsome face oh so handsomer.
"Yes! I love escape rooms!" Omg, this was awesome! Kinda not so awesome for her SnS party, but this meant that Damian wanted to be friends with her. "Sounds like a date!"
"<i>Damian Wayne</i> asked you on a date?" The question came in unison from both Olive and Pomeline who were lounging in various positions in Pom's dorm room while Maps had been recounting the SnS session.
"Pssh!" She snorted, "It's definitely not a date!"
"He specifically visited the school to visit you. He agreed to play a game that he hated from the very first second of hearing it! Wanted to play it again, just to see you! And then, he asked you to go to an escape room, a romantic place for you little nerds, alone!" Pom recounted, ticking off the points on her fingers, "He was asking you out on a date!"
Olive nodded beside her, grinning sweetly while clutching a pillow to her chest.
Maps felt her stomach give a little flutter as the speeding train of realization hit her all at once.
"I'm going on a date with Damian Wayne!"