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It was an afternoon. An ordinary afternoon, of course. Claire, with her brand new hair, was sitting on her favourite table outside the mathematics classroom. Recently there had been more graffitti on that table, and Claire was not happy about it. She was there with a scrubbing brush and spray, and, while it was hard work, she was determined to get it ALL off. Her face was scrunched up, looking like she was doing hard work. It was almost exciting for Claire, to do some good. Though it was good for herself, as she was the only student that sat there. Occasionally other students would come and visit her, but yes. This was for herself, to save her favourite place. Like... an endagered species mission, but it was a table. She'd been there for an hour now. With her reasonably small attention span, this was a big achievement. One thing was for certain, though-- she needed help. She'd only done a quarter of the table in the hour, and there wasn't really much of the day left.

Ren was not anywhere near the mathematics classroom on that ordinary afternoon. In fact, he had spent the better part of his morning searching for a certain lepus that had been absent for several hours - a fact that made Ren feel quite suspicious. He did not trust Rhys to be on his own - ever - and the last time the lepus had gone missing, Ren had found all of his clothes thrown out the window.

He did not particularly want to carry his clothes all the way back up to his room again.

So, for the past few hours now, Ren had been prowling around the school grounds, eyes narrowed as he searched for even a glimpse of that familiar white fur and sly blue eyes. When he finally located the maddening little creature, lurking near one of the classrooms, it had taken Ren nearly three quarters of an hour to actually catch Rhys, and by the time he did, he was utterly exhausted.

"Damn brat," he muttered, as he stalked, hair a mess, clothes askew, down the hallway in Amityville, carting the lepus under one arm. Rhys looked quite a bit more contentthan he should have, but Ren was stubbornly ignoring him.

A scratching sound made slow down a little as he neared the next classroom. There was a blonde ghoul sitting outside, scrubbing furiously at one of the tables.

Ren lifted a brow. From the back, he could not recognize her, but she seemed a little frustrated, so he stepped forward, smiling, and tapped her on the shoulder.

"Hi, there. Whatcha doing? D'you need some help? I'm Ren, by the way."

Scrub scrub scrub
Claire felt a tap on her shoulder and it made her jump. She span around on her chair with her scrubbing brush in-hand and raised her eyebrows at Ren.
"I'm cleaning the graffitti off my table. I do need help, and I know who you are, Ren." replied Claire, looking slightly confused. It was obvious that Ren did not actually know who she was! Claire found this rather funny, and yet weird. After a second's thought, she decided that she should, indeed, introduce herself. So, she put her hand out for him to shake and said, slowly "I am Claire. I am a glutton demon and I'm fairly sure I've met you several times. It's okay if you don't remember me, and if not, nice to meet you!" her tone was calm and sweet. Perhaps Ren was rather forgetful. Fair enough!

It was not a new ghoul at all. Ren blinked.

"Claire?" he said, eyes widening with surprise. Scrutinizing her for a moment, he accepted her hand, stifling back the urge to laugh as his expression melted from one of shock to one of amusement.

"Of course, I know who you are, Claire, darling," he said with a laugh. "I'm sorry, I just - I didn't recognize you with your hair like that. Wasn't it darker before?"

He hadn't seen the gluttony demon for quite some time, he realized - when had the last time been? That disastrous trip to the island? But it seemed so long ago, and Ren frowned slightly before he shook himself out of his inner thoughts and flashed another smile at Claire. He had always liked her, after all; she was quite pleasant.

"Why are you cleaning off the grafiti?" he asked her curiously, peering at the table. There was an irritated chirruping noise from his side, and Ren glanced down.

"Er," he said, a little belatedly. "This is Rhys. My, er. Pet."

Claire was pleased to know that Ren recongnized her. That was nice! She was also pleased to know that he noticed her hair. She had recently dyed it blonde, after all. She grabbed her hair and brought it to the front of her face to look at it (for no particular reason, really) and said "My hair is blonde now! Like yours!" she looked very happy. She wondered breifly if Ren was a blonde rebel. Her diary had told her that not all blondes were rebels, only some. Ren started with an R, and so did Rebel, so maybe there was a connection between them? Note to self, find out what percentage of blondes are rebels. Claire also looked down at the irritated chirruping noise, and also saw the pet. her eyes widenened and her face turned into a complete glowing pile of joy. "It's so cute!!" Claire just wanted to steal it, put it on her bed as a snuggly toy, and cuddle it every night until it died. Well, not really the death bit, but her stomach did like to eat things at night.
She stared at it for a while, until she snapped out of the trance.
"Can you help me clean the graffiti? I don't like graffitti, and I want to keep my table clean." She passed him a rag and got back to work.

Ren lifted a brow with some amusement. "I can see that," he replied with a laugh, reaching out to tweak one of the golden strands. "We match now; that's pretty cool, dontcha think?"

He gave her a playful wink, then glanced down at the lepus still under his arm. Rhys was absently chewing on a carrot, his long ears twitching every now and then.

"He's, er..." said Ren, his face a mask of both exasperation and entertainment. Leaving the sentence unfinished, he turned back to Claire, peering around her to look at the table - which, as it was, did look a little worse for the wear. There was paint smeared across the wooden surface in all different shades of colors, from orange to black to purple to red to green, and then some. A few of the words were slightly...innapropriate, Ren noticed with a slight grimmace, but he quickly moved to stand around the other side of the table, taking the rag from Claire.

"Is this what you've been doing all day?" he asked her, letting Rhys hop up, and, stripping the gloves from his hands, Ren pushed up his sleeves and began scrubbing.

"We do! That's pretty exciting." Claire said with a grin, still scrubbing. Claire looked fondly at Ren and his pet as Ren sat down to help. Her face began to scrunch up again as she removed the words 'barth iz a sxy beest' from the table. That was unnaceptable! Claire's hand was beginning to feel slightly sore as she replied "For an hour. Not all day, I've done a quarter, though!" this was slightly quieter. She had to preserve her energy of course. Ren was rather better at scrubbing than she was, which was good as she was pretty lousy at it. Her whole arm was going pretty red now, and her face was almost stuck in the look of concentration.

Ren was in the process of scrubbing off i liek west's faise, and was so ensconced within his work that it took him a minute or so to realize that Claire had actually answered his question.

"Well, you're certainly a lot more dedicated than I am when it comes to keeping things clean," he said with a laugh, now trying to remove the words u r sexii, which was written in a heavy black marker. "I would've just walked straight on by withot even a second glance. But I'm glad you asked me to help."

Rhys clicked his tongue impatiently, and Ren, rolling his eyes, paused for a moment to reach into his pocket and hand the lepus another carrot. The rabbit snatched it from his fingers and promptly flopped back down onto the table, looking, at least for now, content.

Ren's gaze flickered back to Claire. She was looking rather red in the face, her hair askew, a look of great determination in her eyes as he scrubbed ferociously. It was clear that Claire, for the most part, was not particularly used to such hard work, since she seemed to be a little...well, tired already.

"So," said Ren, wiping clean a spot where riley lieks ghouls had once been scribbled. "How have you been? Enjoying school so far?"

The first quarter of Claire's table had been cleaned, yes, but the faint impressions of the graffitti still remained. Claire made another mental note to clean one particular piece more thoroughly, as it said 'gluttons r a ugly race with 2 mush to eat!!'. Understandably, it offended her a bit. But nonetheless, she moved on and began scrubbing away at a a picture of monster genitals. Claire was not keen on having her beautiful table tarnished by this mess. It seemed fresh, too, so the quicker she got it off the better. "I like my stuff to be clean. I don't really care if I'm the one messing it up, but otherwise..." she said vaguely. The genitals were drawn in a very thick marker. "Graffitti is ugly, anyway." her message was sincere. She really disliked the stuff.
On Ren's question, she launched into a detailed description of what had been happening. Their chit-chat continued on for about an hour and by the time the conversation was finished, so was the cleaning. It seemed like no time at all.
"Oh wow... we're done!" she said, slightly surprised. "Thank you! The table looks so pretty now! Nobody would dare to write on it. I'm going to protect it with my life!"

Claire's table was clean. She almost couldn't believe it! She gave her blonde-haired buddy a hug and started to pack up her stuff.

Ren eyed the little smeared drawing Claire was scrubbing with a faintly amused look, tinged with exasperation. Something about the handwriting beside it seemed a little familiar, but he wasn't about to dwell on it. Returning to the table, he launched into a tirade across the dirtied wood, cleaning it ferociously until it was just as sparkling clean as Claire's side.

"I like my stuff clean too," he said, frowning at a particularly difficult word that proclaimed "POO" in large, block letters. "I guess I just don't have your, er, dedication.

Ren grinned at her, then leaned back and surveyed the newly cleaned table, hands on his hips. "And voila!" he said, with a grand gesture towards their new masterpiece. "Good as new."

He held out his hand and slapped Claire a high five, returning the hug easily, squeezing the demon's shoulders. Then he picked up Rhys (who protested loudly and annoyingly to be returned back to his spot under Ren's arm), and reached out, ruffling Claire's newfound blonde hair.

"Til next time, fellow blonde," he said with wink, and ambled down the hallway back to his dorm.