Gerrie, Wellie, Willoe had a pretty willy home,
Gerrie, Wellie, Willoe had some pretty tasty wine,
And once a month, they'd take it out POP,
And the neighbours would scream HURRAY HEY!
Jumble your words, buh-huh, it's fun,
Stumble your feet, guh-huh, it's dumb,
With drink in the gut, grape swell in the heart,
The light ones will be down in a POOF HEY!
Gerrie, Wellie, Willoe, had a pretty, willy home,
...
Grim first heard the numerous voices singing this dumb song just when he and the tall, thin woman, Allora rose with the cloud.
By the time he was high up in the sky, close to reaching a distinct thundercloud that, unlike the many others around, wasn't moving, he had already buried his fingers deep into his ears.
He hated this merry song.
Why did SHE have to incite the others to sing it right now?
Allora had begun to hum subconsciously while tending to her more serious wounds when Grim gave her a sharp glare that made her turn her head and transition into an innocent whistle.
Moments later, Grim and Allora had borne into the larger cloud above from below and emerged atop it.
The scene that met them... was atrocious.
The twenty-six experts that Grim had been told by the boss to take with him, along with Allora who was gifted the chance to attempt raising her rank, were, while adorned in beautifully crafted golden plate armours of high grades, linking arms, dancing merrily and slugging large cups of wine.
They did a stupid dance where they did sequential high kicks into the air while revolving in a circular motion, singing loudly and irresponsibly, and with paper hats on their heads.
Where had those even come from?!
To add a layer of ridiculous to this, there were three respectable – at least Grim had thought until a second ago – experts who were splashing the others with wine from three huge barrels. Two of them were male and the last was female.
Grim was irritated by the fact that he instantly understood what this arrangement meant.
Apparently, these three were playing the role of Gerrie, Wellie and Willoe dishing out the best wine.
Grim strangled his urge to explode. After all, there was another more outrageous detail.
It was... HER.
The idiot standing outside the circle of fellow idiots with a ukulele that she strummed happily while leading the sing along into the twelve verses of this iconic song she had composed.
Right now, Grim was almost embarrassed to call her his best friend.
"YOU IDIOTS!"
Grim's loud cry killed the fun immediately.
The tens of shocked faces that turned to Grim dumbfounded would have made anyone else laugh hysterically, but no one did.
There was a moment of silence and then the experts withdrew their bottles and hats and stood in neat rows over the cloud at attention, the sternness of their faces almost making out everything they had been doing to be a lie.
Grim sighed.
He didn't even know what to say, and for good reasons.
One, because he couldn't really blame these fools.
And two, because before he was promoted, he had been one of these fools.
"Anyway," Grim said, not sure how to segue from this dignity-straining tragedy to other important news. "Ahem, I'm happy to announce to you, that our very own Allora has successfully raised her rank. She has overcome a crucial trial, and will... probably, be named the fourth Unlimited."
The eyes of the experts were the only things that shone, yet their faces remained stern overall even as they gave a particularly cheerful round of applause.
This was very good news!
Allora smiled.
It was a pretty big step to graduate from being a normal ranked expert within the group.
Most of the time, it was the boss' keen sight that made it apparent that one had incredible potential, but other times, as Allora had experienced, it took a step a faith and rigid grit to rise above others.
She was proud that she didn't wait for her turn silently.
The twenty-five experts gave her a short bow, and she beamed.
This was the least she should get for earning herself a Hidden Class.
"Yeah, yeah. Now let's get moving," Grim said with a sigh, and a pat to Allora's back. The cloud under him and her disappeared.
The one over his head shifted as he expressed his will, and then...
The grand cloud they were all standing on started to move, departing from its previous position in the air.
Doing something like this didn't require that much focus though, as Grim noticed the rapid escape of a certain green haired figure and quickly grabbed her shoulder.
"Oh no you don't, Yu. We need to have a little chat."
Yuyui shrank a little, a last sad, short-lived tune leaving the strings of the ukulele in her hand.
...
The wide thundercloud escaped the trap of others of its kind around.
Naturally, this was no ordinary cloud.
While it was a hundred meters of pure fluff, people could stand on it and move freely.
Each time they made contact with the clouds, sparks of Levin activated to make their steps firm among the clouds, nomatter how rapid and how heavy they were.
Because of this feature, it wasn't strange that a large house had been set up on the far corner of the cloud where the twenty-eight experts had been living for the past two days.
They had gotten used to the sheer ridiculousness of this, as seen with how tables, chairs, umbrellas and other different sets of furniture were strewn about, standing comfortably on the clouds.
The only one with the authority to steer and manipulate this cloud, was Grim. This ability belonged to his boss, and he could gift control over the thundercloud to any one of the three, now four Unlimited, to use for travel, attack and defence. Of course, on their own the Unlimited would have trouble maintaining the cloud, but the Granted Armament helped them sustain it. After all, the cloud required a large amount of mana to keep active for long periods.
At the moment, Grim was sure he could only sustain the cloud for no more than five more hours, which was to be expected since they had been in the sky for a while.
"So, care to explain?" Grim asked the girl sitting on the cloud beside him.
Yuyui had grown quite a bit in the past month. Her lime coloured hair had grown out once again, and she had let it flow as it pleased. It curled at the ends on her shoulder, and perhaps because of habit, she allowed the now longer bangs to cover her Inhumane Eye, which, unlike the Eye of Dispersal, she couldn't shut off. Since being freed by Skullius, she hadn't gotten used to flashing the unnatural eye around, even among familiar company.
Her cheeks had grown plush, but her body retained a normal distribution of fat everywhere else, which was odd... for others, but not so much for those who knew Yuyui's favourite sport; binge eating. Perhaps her cheeks were mutating for convenience.
"We were just singing. Having a bit of fun. We can do that outside Deign. We always do," Yuyui said while avoiding Grim's sharp eyes.
"Yeah? As I recall, we only do silly stuff while keeping a close eye on the surroundings. Gliding in the sky doesn't make us immune to all forms of enemy detection," Grim said sternly. "Your music has a way of taking everyone's attention so well..."
Yuyui shrank again.
"I'm sorry," she said sullenly.
Grim sighed and then comfortably dropped his head onto her lap.
"Now tell me the real reason you did it," he said.
Yuyui wore a duck face.
"W-what do you mean?" she asked nervously.
"You must be an idiot if you think I buy that you just started singing and having everyone dance just for fun, especially when we are on a mission like this."
Yuyui cast away her gaze and pursed her lips.
Grim grinned.
"Well? If you can't tell whatever it is to me, good luck telling anyone else," he said, his gaze unmoving from her face.
Yuyui took a few moments and then finally relented.
"I just... We haven't talked a lot since he split," she said meekly.
"We? You mean you and the boss?"
Yuyui nodded.
"We just grew distant. He's been working so hard to make our band work, building Deign and all, that I..." Yuyui wore a rather sad frown. "I haven't been able to forget, you know? It's like our relationship grew worse when I told him that... Ferex was lost. I don't think he even so much as looks at me since then. I mean... Yeah, it was my fault. I wasn't a good partner. If I was, Ferex wouldn't have had to struggle as he did before..."
Grim said nothing as Yuyui battled with keeping her voice choke free.
He knew a lot about the boss and Yuyui, things that most didn't, even among the Unlimited.
Because of that, Yuyui could confide him in.
"I dream about all this. If I stay idle it haunts me even in the day. It's all I can think about. Doesn't make it better that I have barely made any progress since Ferex... and... I don't know. I just wanted to distract myself a bit. Happy faces do the trick sometimes. A bit of recklessness. Too bad I finished all the food I stored for the journey."
Grim laughed at Yuyui's last sentence.
"What's so funny?" the lime-haired girl asked.
"Oh nothing," Grim said. He pushed back his hair and gave an exasperated sigh.
"You're really putting yourself in the wringer aren't you, Yu? The boss is many things, but he isn't what you just described. I think I might know him better than you do at this point. You don't really make the effort to talk to him, do you? I mean, you're the only person in Deign who can talk to the boss as much as you please, but you just don't."
Yuyui made a defensive face, but then deflated.
"I'm right, aren't I? Well, the boss isn't really the type to chase after you for a talk, I admit. Believe it or not, he doesn't take a break – not that he needs to – and he's constantly doing something, making himself stronger. He strikes me as a guy who doesn't know about human relations any more than a weirdo like you."
Yuyui gave Grim a glare which he scoffed at.
"If you don't want to be thinking about this all day, talk to the boss. He'll listen. You two go way back."
"That's an overstatement..." Yuyui shifted uncomfortably.
"Whatever. I'm not going to listen to another sob story from you if it's about this," Grim said before flicking Yuyui's forehead.
She yelped and rubbed where it hurt.
"I... I can try. He's just... so different from before..."
"That doesn't matter. He's still...OH! We're here!" Grim got up and looked down from the edge of the thundercloud.
"We are where? Have we already arrived over Deign?" Yuyui asked while following after him.
"Nope. I just want to see if the things that attracted me earlier are worth checking out. Who knows, maybe they will be useful, or at least be good sparring partners..." Grim said before leaping from the cloud and dropping down to the open waters close to the drifting chunk on a island.
This content is taken from fr(e)ewebn(o)vel.𝓬𝓸𝓶