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Giselle's body had been awake for four hours, but Giselle had only been awake for three.

It had taken her a while to pull herself back from where she had been, death aside. The images were still in her head, and she was pushing them down as best she could, but it didn't change the fact that she had failed. She had lost control, utterly lost it, and it had resulted in her death.** And all it had taken was looking into that gap and...

Push it down. She hadn't seen it, she told herself, but her hands were shaking and revealing the lie. The problem was that no matter what she tried to convince herself to believe, she could remember everything.

If only that was her worst problem. That was an emotional problem, one she could push down and bottle up deep inside of her to deal with later. No, she had a few other problems, and they were going to be much harder to deal with. Firstly, she appeared to be a member of the undead community, which was absurd, but there was no other way to explain it at present. The campus was most certainly burnt, and she was most certainly not, and she felt an inexplicable urge to eat things she would not normally eat. Human flesh, for instance. Until she found a historically sound explanation, 'undead' was the best tag she could put on herself. She remembered losing herself, and the girl she had become had certainly remembered dying.

If only that was her worst problem. Like the dream she had about eating Elke, Giselle could regain control of herself with enough effort, and her willpower was enormous. However, she distracted herself from urges with rituals, such as work and studying. All her possessions were nothing more than charcoal now, even her big history book, even her father's coat, and without possessions she wasn't just totally exposed, she was barely at half her full potential. Giselle needed things the same way generals needed armies. Without her possessions, she was unarmed to fight off threats both mental and physical. That was her worst problem, and it was frustrating her. She couldn't even find a tie for her hair, and she needed to put it up to feel even slightly in control. Every time the wind blew at her blonde locks, she felt the angry urge to just rip them out, because they made her feel like she couldn't control herself. She always put her hair up, but now, when she needed to control herself the most, she had to realize just how hard control was without even a hairtie to her name. She could bottle up emotions, repress urges, but she could not materialize things from thin air.

She drew her mouth into a taut, thin line, pulling uselessly at the hair again. She was, for lack of a better explanation, undead. She was unarmed. But she still had responsibilities.

She began to look for allies, clues as to what was going on, or at least some bobby pins.

**Giselle believed in the inevitable like atheists believed in Sunday service.

The first person she ran into was someone she knew.

This was a fortunate coincidence, considering that while Elke (And here the mental image floated back, only to be furiously stamped back down.) was a social butterfly, Giselle was a social moth. She was terrible at getting to know people, and even more terrible at getting people to like her. Thus, when she identified Sebastién as the, for lack of a better term, undead figure scratching around in the rubble, she felt some sort of relief creep over her. Sebastién was tolerable. A bit too romantic about his history, but he knew his history, and thus Giselle respected him more than she did others. He wasn't the best, for lack of a better term, person she could have run into, but he certainly wasn't the worst. Without hesitation, she marched up to him and said "Good day, Sebastién."

Despite her formal greeting, she was still hard to recognize. Living Giselle Petrova had always kept her appearance neat and tidy, but Undead Giselle Petrova was in a torn, sooty nightdress (which was fortunately black, and good for looking clean when it, in fact, wasn't), blonde hair combed with her fingers, but still dirty and wild, especially compared to her usual tight bun. "Do you know what's happened to us at all?"

Do you think there was a fire or something?

He must have slept right through it, through the smoke and everything. He was in his pyjamas, after all, though Giselle had seen a few or the, for lack of a better term, undead, in uniform. Giselle closed her eyes and pushed away the memories as she replied, "Yes. There was a conflagration. I tried to get out, I saw-" she hesitated, looked at him, looked at the ground, looked at the sky, but continued at last, because if the record was not historically accurate, then she had to make it so. "El- A girl burning, it was too late!" she interjected quickly, trying to defend herself, because Elke had been her responsibility, "It was too late to help her, she had fallen in a gap in the floor and I couldn't reach." Tears were rising in her eyes again, and she blinked them back furiously. It was the loose hair that was causing it, she convinced herself. Petrovas did not cry, they got up and did something about whatever the problem was. But staying perfectly composed what with the,for lack of a better term, undead-ness about her, all the hair waving about was difficult to say the least. She fluttered her hands and took a deep breath, continuing, "And then my body burned."

"I am quite sure my body burned, but here I am, only my skin has a strange tinge to it, and I'm hungry. I'm not burnt into ashes. You're right, it is very strange. Everything about this school has been strange recently. The teachers have vanished, the books have burned, and quite frankly, I want some answers. Not even Robespierre could deal with this lunacy." The statement would have been more emphatic if a stray breeze hadn't blown some of her hair into her mouth, making her sputter and swipe at her face.

"Do you have a ribbon or a hair pin or anything?" she asked frustratedly.

She shook her head. "I looked. There doesn't seem to be anything but us, and we have no way of alerting anyone with all our laptops and such burned. I don't know about you, but the outside already reacts unfavourably when they see a senshi on the streets. I doubt they'll listen to what someone who looks, for lack of a better term, undead says, or that the person who looks, for lack of a better term, undead will have long to, for lack of a better term, live. I personally am not willing to bet my inexplicable second life trying to do so."

She looked away from him, because at this point, a small yet insistent part of her mind was pointing out that he looked delicious, and not in the normal context that teen girls used the word to label boys with. "Hair tie. No, there are really more important things we could be doing. Finding people, finding stories. History is a collection of accounts of an event, maybe someone saw how the fire started, or where the teachers went to. Maybe I can figure out who else seemed to die and came out of the rubble fully functioning. If I can get answers, maybe I can do something about it, and that is what is most important right now." She got up, but as she did so, her stomach rumbled loudly and ominously.

"Hair tie. Yes, let's go find one, please." She needed control over herself before she could do anything else, even over something little like her hair. If she didn't have control over that even, she could hardly be up to controlling, for lack of a better term, undead hunger pangs.

She nodded, mouth drawn into a taut line. "Let's look." she said, feeling frustrated that she had to take a detour for something like a hair tie, but she had nothing. She needed something, and a hair tie had been the most rudimentary weapon in Giselle's arsenal since her hair had grown past her shoulders in second grade. She felt indecent when her hair was down. She couldn't think right when her hair was down.

Not that she didn't feel indecent in a torn black nightdress with nagging urges to eat people and greeny-deadish looking skin. But she felt more indecent with her hair down, and though a change in outfit was hard to find and new skin even harder, a hair tie was possible. "...Thank you." she added as an afterthought, as she trudged over to the debris of the building. "It's kind of you to help me."

If she got back to normal somehow, if she ever saw her home again (and she would, she swore to herself: failure was unacceptable), Tate would never believe a word of this. She was, for lack of a better term, undead, and thanking another, for lack of a better term, undead student for helping her with her first priority, which was finding a hairband.

At his comment, her own stomach interjected, and she looked away again, fidgeting nervously. "Yes. I'm quite hungry too, but I don't believe there's any food around..." She trailed off, eyes sliding over to look at him of their own accord. God, he wasn't even a living one. It would practically be cannibalism.

Moist, juicy, canni-

DON'T THINK ABOUT IT, her mind interjected, and she walked a little faster.

She didn't like how he was looking at her, never mind that she only saw how he was looking at her because she couldn't quite resist looking at him again in the exact same way. It was not a look that inspired confidence.

"I don't think anywhere got out without some damage." she admitted, trying to distract herself from her stomach. Giselle wasn't sure about the library though, which gave her some hope. She had not yet mustered up the courage to check on it, for fear of the worst. "Maybe they would have elastics in a janitor's closet or something," she added uncertainly. Students like Giselle had no reason to even think about janitors' closets and probably Sebastién never had either. Anyone ambitious enough to get into Barren Pines was probably never going to grow up to be a janitor. Unless, of course, their talent was cleaning, in which case, exceptions might be made.

However, this meant that Giselle had no idea where the janitor's closet might be hidden, and she looked into the school cautiously, as if the closet was a wild animal that was easily frightened. "Have you seen any other people?" she asked as she stepped into the hall.

Even if he had, she probably wouldn't know precisely who they were, she realized, stomach churning with a strange cocktail of guilt and hunger that she did her best to ignore. It had been Elke who kept her updated about other people.

His comment was not appreciated by Giselle, and if she felt she could safely look at him to glare, she would have. But she could no more look at him directly than she could fly, so instead her body movements expressed her disapproval. If anyone could walk in a slightly chilly manner, it was Giselle Petrova.

"There must be something. Things don't simply walk off when one decides one needs them," said Giselle the Humourless, still a bit fussed by the suggestion that French books could be more important than history books. As she had lost all her own history books in the fire, the remark hit a sore spot for her.

Her stomach was really beginning to hurt now, short pangs of hunger flaring up every few moments. She bit her lip, which helped a little, but then it helped a little too much, and she released it so she would not be tempted to consume part of herself. Spotting a door, she walked into it to find a slightly burnt classroom, which she proceeded to search.

"No, you're the first I've approached." she replied curtly. It wasn't a bad thing, but it wasn't ideal either. She would prefer to know if Elke (insert obligatory guilty stomach turn here) was alive, or "alive" as the case might be, or meet up with someone she knew better. But Sebastién was capable and cooperative so far. It could be far worse. "I have seen figures moving about though. No one I know."

"I understood the statement, Sebastién," she said a bit snappishly. The hunger was making her more and more restless, and the fact her hair was loose was just adding to her frustration. "It's simply an illogical term to make up for lack of organization." Before the fire, Giselle could have listed every single possession she owned and where it was at any given moment. Cute expressions like 'it walked away' were for the weak and untidy. As she spoke, she rummaged in the drawers of the teacher's desk in the classroom, and let out a triumphant 'ah!' as she pulled out a thin rubber band. It wasn't perfect, but it would do. She combed her hair with her fingers, pulling the lank blonde locks back into a ponytail as tight as she could make it. As it stayed, even when she shook her head from side to side, she stated "This will do. I'm not familiar with the theatre, nor where they might keep the costumes."

With the ponytail, some fragment of her patience seemed to return to her, and she took a deep breath, glancing at Sebastién and adding "What kind of flags did you use? We might find some somewhere." It was a weak offer, probably futile, but they might find some better hair tie while they were at it. And she owed him. It was best to pay the debt as soon as possible, because in a, for lack of a better term, undead apocalypse, who knew what might happen?

At the mention of Elke, her throat caught. She had to find her, as soon as she was done with Sebastién. She had failed her. If Elke was, for lack of a better term, undead, though, she would have the chance to make up for it. Sebastién was, for lack of a better term, undead. It wasn't unlikely. "I'll find her." she managed to say carefully. "I'm her tutor. She's my responsibility."

Most tutors did not consider their responsibility to their pupils to continue after said pupil had burned alive in a tragic fire. Giselle was not most tutors. Elke's death was a failure on her behalf, and if she was given the chance to fix it, by God, she would drag her rotting corpse across a bed of nails to do so.