Adele adjusted her glasses and stomped her way through the halls. She found her target, took a moment to psyche herself up, and knocked on Vell’s door. He answered it in a moment, still covered in stone dust from a rune he’d been carving. His face lit up with a smile and his hands weaved through the motions of a “hello”.

“Hi, Vell, I- Did you just sign at me?”

Vell nodded and then slowly went through a series of signs asking if he was doing it right. As his motions were more awkward and stilted than proper sign language, his signs stayed signs instead of being auto-translated to audible words, but Adele still understood. And also she was still deaf, so she wouldn’t have heard the words even if they were translated.

“Uh, yes, it’s fine,” Adele signed. A bit sluggish, but fine. He’d even learned British Sign Language instead of assuming American Sign Language was universal. “But why?”

At this point Vell had exhausted his very limited knowledge of sign language and took to conversing vocally, letting Adele’s glasses make up the difference.

“Well, you’ve got the glasses to accommodate us, I figured someone should be putting some effort into accommodating you,” Vell said. Adele smiled in spite of herself.

“That’s very sweet, Vell,” she signed. “But I’m alright. Really, I’ve had the glasses so long it’s actually weirder to see you sign.”

“Okay, well, you saw like fifty percent of what I know just now, so I don’t expect to be having casual conversation in sign language any time soon,” Vell said. Adele gave a muted chuckle. “Anyway. What brings you here?”

“We need to talk,” Adele signed. “I have a plan.”

At Vell’s invitation, Adele stepped inside and took a seat in his dorm.

“So, I’ve been...hanging out with Lee for a while,” Adele signed. “And that’s it. Hanging out.”

“Yeah, so she’s said,” Vell said. “I think she’s a little scared to call it ‘dating’.”

“I think you’re right,” Adele signed. “But I also think I have an idea to help out.”

Vell waited for her to explain. Adele leaned forward and started signing so fast the gloves could barely keep up.

“I think I can lower the tension a bit by making it a double date,” Adele said. “There’ll be less pressure since it’ll be more social than a one on one date, but it’ll still officially be a ‘date’, and then we’ll have broken down that barrier and be ready to go on a real date, just the two of us!”

Vell nodded along. Easing into it was generally a sound plan, and this seemed like it would push Lee forward without moving too fast. Vell was on board already.

“Okay, so, from the fact that you’re here, I take it you want me to be one half of the other couple on the double date,” Vell said. Adele nodded.

“You or Harley,” Adele signed. “Lee’s most comfortable around you guys. It’d be a big help.”

“Well, I can try, but...”

Adele nodded as Vell trailed off. His last two relationships had ended up in really weird places, so he’d vowed to avoid romance for a while.

“It doesn’t have to be serious,” Adele signed.

“It has to be a little serious,” Vell said. “Let me talk to Harley. She’s usually good at psyching me up.”

Harley nodded a few times as Vell recapped the situation, though she never looked up from her robotics project. She was onboard with the double date plan for now.

“So why’re you coming to me?” Harley said. “You asking me on a date, Harlan?”

“Nah, Lee wouldn’t buy it if it was the two of us,” Vell said. They had made it very clear they had no intention of becoming a couple. While Lee was oddly disappointed by that, she’d accepted it. She would never view a date between the two as sincere.

“Good point. It’s probably not a good idea in general,” Harley said. “Every double date I go on ends in a foursome.”

“You could just, uh, not do that,” Vell suggested,

“It’s not like I’m trying, it just happens,” Harley said. “I have that kind of energy, I guess.”

“I can see that.”

“You’ve seen everything else, why not that?” Harley said with a wink. “Anyway. So why did you come to me if not for an easy hookup? You want to grab one of my friends for a pretend date?”

“Well, sort of, uh-”

“‘Uh’ no more Vell Harlan, I got this,” Harley said. She lifted her head and shouted into the expanse of the robotics workshop. “Anyone want to go to dinner with Vell?”

“I’ll go,” Himiko said.

“Himiko, you don’t like dudes.”

“I like dinner.”

“Sadly you are not eligible for this offer,” Harley said. Lee knew Himiko was also a lesbian, so she wouldn’t buy her being on a date with Vell. “Kanya! You got a free evening?”

“Sure! I also like dinner.”

“Everyone likes dinner. Sarah, you were into Vell once, the offer is also open to you.”

“Harley-”

“I no longer am attracted to the boy but enjoying dinner is something I also do.”

“Hey. But also, Harley-”

“Okay, that’s two,” Harley said. She informed Sarah and Kanya that the details would be ironed out later, and then returned to her conversation with Vell. “What if we called in Leanne? Would she still be down for a date with you? You guys had a sort of-maybe-kinda thing, right?”

“It was complicated,” Vell said. His “romance” with their former comrade-in-loops stood somewhere between a hypothetical and a hookup. It was irrelevant either way. “She started dating some soccer player anyway, she wouldn’t go for it.”

“Okay, but what then?”

“Well, as I was trying to say three times,” Vell said. His initial indignation faded into mumbling very quickly. “I sort of already had someone in mind.”

Harley gasped.

“Vell Harlan, I am scandalized! Here I thought you came to me immediately whenever you had even a slightly strange feeling involving a woman.”

“It’s not that serious,” Vell said. “I wouldn’t be asking, normally. But, uh, if I’m going to ask anyone, I might as well, you know, ask her.”

The redness in Vell’s face said he was taking this fairly seriously and therefore, so did Harley. She lightened up on her joking attitude and chose a slightly less mocking tone as she continued. A little mockery helped break the ice.

“Understandable. So, Mr. Harlan, the question remains, who is this mystery girl you’ve fallen for?”

“Do you know Amy Sek Keong?”

Harley did a quick scan of her mental list of associates. Due to her outgoing personality, constantly having to meet new people to prevent apocalypses, and her extensive list of booty calls, Harley’s social network was quite large, and this took some time.

“I don’t think I do,” Harley said. “Is she that scientist chick you rescued from quantum quicksand that one time?”

“No. As far as I know, she’s never really gotten involved in our stuff,” Vell said.

“Then how’d you meet?”

“I have classes, I talk to people,” Vell said defensively. “Sometimes I just want to chat about normal things, like movies, or class work, and not quantum quicksand.”

“Understandable. So why am I involved, then? If you want to ask the chick, just go ask her.”

“I need pep talks sometimes,” Vell admitted.

“Vell, you should not need any pep talks. Ladies love you. You’re charming, you’re funny, you’re smart, and you’re great at eating p-”

“Okay, that’s enough, thanks,” Vell said. “If it even happens, it’ll be a first date, so let’s try to keep it a little more chaste. I’m going to go talk to Amy, bye.”

Vell left in a hurry while Harley tried not to laugh to herself. The best kind of motivation was the motivation to get out of your chair and do something, and her trick had gotten him out of his chair in a hurry. Harley tracked his progress and saw Kanya doing the same thing, with a raised eyebrow. As soon as Vell was out of the room, Kanya and her raised eyebrow turned to Harley.

“Great, huh?”

“Last I checked, yeah.”

“Hmm. If this doesn’t work out, maybe I will take him to dinner,” Kanya said. Harley chuckled to herself. She was starting to rub off on Kanya. Not literally, though. Yet.

Vell took his seat in the classroom and tried not to overthink the situation. Confidence was key, and if Amy walked in and saw him looking nervous it would throw a wrench in everything. It was no big deal. It was just a casual, one-time thing. Nothing serious.

But he hadn’t thought of Joan or Kim as serious things at the time either. He didn’t really want to think of how that had turned out. He really didn’t want to go three for three on dating his way into incredibly fucked up situations. But he didn’t really wanna stay single forever either. Had to shoot a shot eventually, he thought.

“You look like you need to fart, Vell.”

Thanks to a year of being randomly ambushed by super predators and fiery death, Vell didn’t often jump at unexpected voices, not even Amy’s. He took a deep breath and relaxed as she stood next to him.

“I’m good.”

“Alright, great, because I got to sit next to you all class, and Reg smells bad enough for the both of you already” Amy said. She gave Reg, her neighbor on the other side, a soft punch on the shoulder and took her seat.

The rune class dragged on, giving Vell no distractions from thoughts of how to ask Amy on a date. Or of Amy in general. He’d always thought of her as very attractive in a way Harley would make fun of him for. His attraction anything vaguely punk-looking was a favorite point of mockery for her, and Amy’s close-cropped hair and sleeve tattoo fit the bill. In spite of that attraction, he’d rarely entertained even the slightest notion of asking her on a date, thanks to his last two disastrous relationships.

Her sleeve tattoo had runes engraved in the intricate line work. Simple ones, far less complex than the ten-lined rune on his back that been such a thorn in his past relationships, but still runes. A permanently visible reminder of everything that could possibly go wrong. But this was going to be a casual thing. For Lee’s sake. He could at least try. There was still a good chance she’d say no, even. Trying was the best he could do right now.

Class ended, and Vell grabbed his books in a hurry, but not too much of a hurry, so he could keep pace with Amy. Her next class and Vell’s next class were in completely different directions, so she immediately noticed Vell’s presence at her side as she walked.

“What’s up, Vell?”

“Long story. You remember my friend Lee, I think I’ve mentioned her sometimes?”

“Yeah. What’s up with her?”

“Well, she’s just being generally awkward, and her girlfriend and I were kind of thinking she’d loosen up if she went on a double date…”

It took exactly half a second for Amy to figure out Vell’s plan. Her eyes locked on to Vell with an unusually intense glare.

“Are you asking me out?”

“Sort of,” Vell said. “Not, uh, I mean, yes, I am asking you out. Just as a one time thing, you know. For the double date.”

Amy raised a single thick eyebrow at the prospect of a date. She then stopped walking, appraised Vell from top to bottom, and nodded a few times as she did so. Vell didn’t know what to do in this situation, so he stopped and stood completely still while Amy circled him to continue her examination. She did a full loop around Vell twice, then opened a notebook from her bookbag, examined a page, nodding as she read. Finally, and for reasons Vell did not fully understand, she examined the tattoos on her arm. Once she was done, Amy crossed her arms and nodded once.

“Okay, one follow-up question,” Amy said. “How many chicks did you ask before me? Because I am nobody’s fifth choice, Vell Harlan.”

“Is five where you draw the line?”

“Yes. Fourth place is only one off the podium, and I’m not that competitive, but fifth place is just too far,” Amy said. “Answer the question.”

“Well, that not-that-competitive part of you can relax, because you’re the first person I’m asking,” Vell said. Amy smiled, but shook her head.

“Vell Harlan, you have to work on your technique,” she said. ‘Tell me I’m second or third, make me desperate for your approval.”

“Negging is for assholes,” Vell said.

“Right you are,” Amy said. “I guess I’m in. When are you going to be sweeping me off my feet?”

“I got to talk to Adele -Lee’s girlfriend- and see what works for them. I’ll text you.”

“Sounds good. Don’t keep a girl waiting, Harlan,” Amy said. She tucked her notebook away and then walked out of sight, giving Vell a flirtatious wave as she left. As soon as she was around a corner and out of sight, she pulled the notebook back out. She probably had a couple days to work with. Hopefully enough time to make all the necessary preparations.

“And then my uncle had to swerve to avoid a manatee, and the boat tilted,” Amy said. “So that’s how the third boat sank, and after that they just gave up.”

“Manatees don’t even live in Singapore,” Lee said.

“Yeah, that was the weird part,” Amy said. “It wouldn’t be an interesting story if it was some normal animal.”

The double date was well underway, and with the introductions out of the way, the topic had shifted to casual conversation. Lee was being silent, as was to be expected, but Amy was more than comfortable filling the silence with her own stories.

“Sometimes I wonder if animals even have natural habitats,” Vell said. “They always seem to end up where they don’t belong.”

“Like that gorilla, right?” Amy said.

“Don’t get me started.”

“Didn’t a friend of yours try to talk to it?”

“And all she got in return was a handful of sand, yes,” Lee said.

“That’s better than what most people get from a gorilla,” Amy said.

“Which is?”

Amy paused and chewed on her dinner thoughtfully for a second.

“I don’t know, actually,” she admitted. “I’m not a gorilla-ologist.”

“I don’t think that’s the word,” Adele signed.

“Are you a gorilla-ologist?”

“No.”

“Then I guess we have no way of knowing,” Amy said. “Though speaking of, what exactly do you study, Adele?”

“Art restoration,” she signed. “All the different magical ways to un-fade paint, basically.”

“Oh, that’s cool,” Amy said. “That stuff helped put the Venus de Milo back together, right?”

“We don’t like to talk about it,” Adele said, somehow managing to mumble via sign language. The triumph of using temporal magics to restore the Venus’s arms had turned quickly turned to shame. Some people claimed it was a sort of temporal accident, but most people acknowledged that the Venus de Milo’s long-missing arms had been giving a handjob to another statue all along.

“I get you. Still rad, though.”

“You kind of like sculpture, huh?” Vell noted. Amy had gone on a long rant about her vacation to Angkor Wat not long after Vell had met her. In spite of it’s long-winded nature, her passion for the subject had made it interesting -and made Vell a little more interested in Amy in the process.

“I wouldn’t call myself an art appreciator or anything, I’m too dumb for that,” Amy said. “But the kind of stuff those old dudes could do is mind-blowing. Like, I struggle to spend three hours writing an essay on a computer, those guys were building entire cities or absurd anatomical sculptures with like, a chisel and a rock.”

“And several hundred hours of work, to be fair,” Vell said.

“But that just makes it more impressive!”

Amy got lost in her passion for sculpting yet again, and Vell got lost in her getting lost. Adele side-eyed the other half of her double date and then turned her attention back to her own partner.

“They seem to be enjoying themselves,” she noted.

“They do,” Lee said. “Far more than I was expecting them to, considering this wasn’t their idea.”

Adele raised an eyebrow and then shrugged.

“I knew I wasn’t that clever,” Adele signed. Lee had seen right through her intentions for this double-date. “Are you okay with this?”

“Yes, actually,” Lee said. “You assumed correctly. I do feel a bit more at ease in a group.”

“Good to hear. Sorry if it seemed like I was scheming behind your back.”

“It’s quite alright. Sometimes I need a little push to get me out of my comfort zone.”

The circumstances of her upbringing had left Lee more than a little cripplingly socially maladjusted, and she knew that. If not for the occasional aggressive push from Harley or Adele, she’d still be talking without using contractions, just like her parents had taught her. Her friends had yet to push her anywhere she didn’t already want to go, just places she was too scared to go on her own.

“Alright then, I guess the next question is: are you enjoying the date?”

Lee turned bright red. She’d been hoping to avoid this particular push.

“Yes. This is...a very good...date.”

Adele smiled brightly, almost brightly enough to cancel out the fact that it got very dark very fast. The smile dropped off Adele’s face as she looked up at the storm clouds. There hadn’t been a cloud in the sky just moments ago. Vell and Lee also looked up, with deep concern in their eyes. Out of consideration for their non-looper dates, they had scheduled the date on the second loop, and today’s apocalypse (Lethe water in the plumbing) had already been dealt with.

For once, though, this was not an apocalypse, and it was not happening to them, technically.

“Fuck,” Amy muttered under her breath. “This again?”

Vell stopped looking skyward and started looking Amy-ward.

“Again?”

“Yeah, so, uh, I’m a little cursed,” Amy said. “I thought I had it handled, but, well, apparently not.”

Amy reached into the neckline of her shirt and pulled out a large silver talisman which should’ve prevented her curse from taking effect. Since it had obviously failed, Amy tore the symbol from her neck and threw it on the table.

“Should’ve known that was a piece of shit,” she muttered. “Rip off.”

“No, dear, you’ve just got the wrong talisman,” Lee said. She knew quite a bit about hexes, charms, and curses of all kinds, having been on the receiving end of more than one. “Your medallion is designed to negate blood curses, this is a grave curse. One is a rite committed out of anger involving sacrifice, the other-”

A loud clap of supernatural thunder boomed a little to close for comfort.

“I suppose the details aren’t important,” Lee said. “What exactly is the nature of this curse?”

“Whenever I try to date, the-”

A bolt of blue fire shot down from the heavens, colliding with the ground a few feet away. No deafening thunderclap followed, but in the aftermath of the bolt, the blue fire took a new shape, forming itself into a ghostly warrior. The lightly armored skeletal figure brandished a long lance in the direction of the double date.

“-well, that happens,” Amy said, finishing her sentence. “Usually there’s more.”

The one ghostly soldier became zero ghostly soldiers as Lee obliterated it with a bolt of magical energy.

“You knew this was going to happen?”

There was an unusual bitterness in Vell’s voice that worried Lee. Amy just shrugged.

“I thought I had it handled!”

“You could’ve told me!”

“Then it would’ve been an experiment, not a date,” Amy said. “I’m sorry, I genuinely thought this was going to work!”

“Well it didn’t,” Vell snapped. “Now what?”

“As soon as I’m done dating, the curse stops,” Amy sighed. “So just dump me.”

“Gladly. Amy-”

“Wait,” Lee interrupted. “I could break the curse. It would need to be active anyway for the ritual to work, and since we’re already here…”

“Don’t be ridiculous, lady, you’d need a dragon bezoar to absorb that much negative energy,” Amy said.

“I know. Vell, dear, could you fetch one of ours from the storage locker?”

“Yeah, sure,” Vell sighed. He summoned his guns and started loading them up with anti-ghost ammunition. “Did we use the red one or the grey one for the last curse? I don’t want to overload them.”

“Red,” Lee said. “Amy, dear, do the ghosts follow you or stay by the location of the date?”

“Follow.”

“Ah. Perhaps it’s best you stay with Vell, then. I won’t be able to defend you while I prepare the ritual, but he will.”

The look on Vell’s face said he wasn’t excited about that idea. Amy wasn’t a big fan either.

“Y’know, he could still just dump me and be done with it,” Amy suggested.

“Ugh, no, let’s do this,” Vell grunted. “Unlike you, I don’t want to make this curse someone else’s problem.”

Vell holstered his gun and headed for the lockers, with Amy hot on his heels. While Lee drew a few ritual lines on the picnic table that had been the place of their date, Adele sighed deeply.

“So this is the worst date ever, I guess,” Adele signed.

“All the more reason for us to have another, I suppose,” Lee said. The positive spin helped a little, but then Vell drew his guns and shot a ghost, which kind of put a damper on things.

At least it was a date, Adele thought to herself.