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((...Oh well.))

"Or you just dig yourself a nice hole and tunnel down under it." She said, still confused. What did this have to do with...anything.

Danni blinked, disbelieving. "I can stay." She knew it wasn't permanent, knew she could be out on her a** tomorrow, but right now all that was really registering was the fact that she wasn't leaving today.

"I can stay." With a grin of absolute relief and gratitude, she let her watery legs give out from under her and slid down to the floor again, looking up at him.

"Thank you." Then she shook her head, found her balance again as she looked up at him.

"Of course there's to be a punishment. Name it." She said, though relief still coursed through her.

Danni flushed a bit when Ialo spoke those first words. No, the world didn't revolve around her. She knew that.

She nodded at the first punishment. Clean the clocktower, sure. She'd been up there before, snooping around when she was bored. It was full of cobwebs and dust, with a little closet-sized room at the top of the endless winding stairs, with an old dusty cot and a cracked lamp.

She winced a bit when he ordered her to continue self control training. Oh, Christ. God damn it.

But her eyes popped wide again when he banned her from the kitchens, from the shack. "I...I...Yes." She clamped her mouth shut again, her eyes becoming shuttered. Her kitchens...Her home. Banned. Oh, s**t. Cooking was her escape, and the shack was the only place she'd ever called home. But she deserved this, she supposed. Yes, she deserved this, and more.

But when he said he had a gift for her, she frowned a bit, suspicious. "...What?" She asked finally, holding back a sigh. Well, she'd just sleep in the bell tower. It would take a while to clean anyway.

"Of course." She said stiffly, and got to her feet. "I'll move my things out of the shack right away." She said, and across the room, Cook shot to attention, eyes wide.

"What was that?" He asked, and she looked at him, managed a smile. "It's punishment, and nothing less than I deserve." She turned to Ialo, and that smile went grateful for a moment.

"I'll thank you, for doing this instead of expulsion. I won't cause you any more trouble. I'll start cleaning the tower as soon as I've gathered everything." She would drop eventually, she knew, but for now she would busy her hands, if not her mind.

She brushed past Cook, placed a hand on his arm for a moment before she walked out.

It was with a quick, quiet efficiency that she teleported into the shack. The dogs, smelling her, set up a ruckus and surrounded her. With a laugh, she dropped to her knees, buried her face in Moe's fur as the other leaped around her, excited.

"Oh, I missed you too...And I will miss you. Come now, off of me." She pushed them gently aside, then mounted the steps, walked up to her room as she ran her hand along the worn bannister.

"Ah, here we are." Her door was still open, and she looked around. She had little, really, no more than what would fit in her bag and a duffle.

While the dogs sniffed around her, she packed up what she had, keeping her mind blank as her hands folded clothes, stowed them in the duffle. She swept her hand over the nightstand beside her bed, dumping the contents into the duffle as well, which were the ribbons her father had given her for Christmas, a brush and comb, a squat candle, and a picture frame with a framed photo of the shack, with Cook and the dogs standing in front of it, grinning as she took the shot.

In mere minutes, the room was bare of anything but what had been there a year and a half before, and the duffle and bag were thrown over her shoulder.

"Couldn't have picked a better punishment." She murmured, and then closed her eyes, visualizing the bell tower. In moments, she reappeared inside the tower, in the closet-like bunk room with the cot in the corner and the cracked lamp on the miniature desk.

"Get to work, girl. You sure as hell screwed things up." She muttered, and summoned up a dust rag, deciding to tackle the cobwebs first.

Danni was surprised as she looked around the bell tower. True, the closet room was nasty, but the actual bell tower, and the god forsaken stairs leading up to it, were in decent shape. Cobwebs were only really in the corners and in the bells.

With a quiet sigh, she whistled for Zapporo, and stood on him, where he flew up to the high ceiling of the tower. "And isn't this a view?" She murmured, and looked through the huge opening to where the grounds of Mystic Fountain spread into the forests.

"All right, finish the job." She yawned, dreamed of a nice long nap, while she busied her hands dusting away cobwebs, then sweeping the floors. She amused herself by making faces in the metal as she polished the bells, concentrated a bit as she oiled gears.

"All we need is a few gargoyles." She muttered, shaking her head.

((To summarize the craziness that Mitsuki and I posted: Ialo came in, talked to Danni, gave her a punishment for being so reckless and scaring him, and now Ialo is in the room but Danni is not.))

Adolf watched how Ialo dealt with Danni. He wasn't sure exactly what that girl was... but he could tell that Ialo was close to her, and she to him. The sort of relationship did not matter to Adolf; he was a casual observer in this case. Ialo had dealt nicely, though, if one were to ask the yokai. For all Adolf's many years, and the supposed wisdom that was to come with them, he wasn't sure that there was a wise way to deal with what had happened. Ialo simply chose the best fool's route.

Addressing said dragon, Adolf spoke. "With your permission, as you are the headmaster, I will take up a teaching position at this school." Out of habit, he bowed slightly--not more than ten, perhaps fifteen degrees--as he spoke. It was, to Adolf, simply a gesture of respect for a person he was asking to work for. For so very many years, it had been one of the only ways it would have ever been possible to get a job for those who did not have one to inherit from family.