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Jeremy pads up to a small ledge atop the PE closet, their home base, or rather the ones who called it home, he bitterly remarks, staring out into the eerily quiet schoolgrounds, bathed in a veil of cold and unfeeling moonlight.
He was still unsure, admittedly, if he really wanted to join the Revolution's cause, sure, he was turned into a rat by some mysterious force propelled by his untimely death by something he couldn't see like everyone else, and it all connected back to their bastard of a principal. The cause itself was something he would support without regret, that resolution is in stasis.
But was toppling a whole school a smart move to get rid of one person? Jeremy believes the contrary, I mean-- no fair dragging everyone else down with you, right? What about the students? The teachers? All of them were not guilty, unlike their dastardly head.
He curls his thin pinprick tail thoughtfully, his fur gently ruffled by the chilling December winds that occasionally buffeted his sides to a point he couldn't breathe past the shivering northern breeze. Well, guess one pro of being a rat was that he had the fur needed to keep himself...what was the word again, insulated?
Sure, he is- or was taking Chemistry, doesn't mean he remembers what was the word for!
He huffs back a lopsided chuckle.
Besides his continuously failing language skills, back to the matter. Does he really want to join? The company is nice, sure, Leader Rat is great, the PC setup is no doubt glorious, and Rat himself just gave him that sense of familiarity that slightly reminded him of his old friends.
Where had his old friends gone? He curls his tongue, commenting inwardly how the sharper and flatter shape of the muscle felt obscenely weird in his mouth, he supposes he'd get used to the feeling, but the way it stuck curled in his mouth made him more self-conscious than he'd like to be on what he assumed to be 10 p.m. on a school night.
“Never mind.” He pushes that thought away, silently hoping they were okay out of town.
Far, far fucking away from Sunny Moor.
The only problem Jeremy had with the Revolution at this point would just be the distrust he felt pointed towards the large camaraderie of rats that claim to hold the souls of classmates he may or may not've met. He was willing to put that aside if it meant his life, but being a rat, he was pretty sure he could get hiding better than he usually could as a big, lumbering clumsy human.
Perhaps he didn't need them, they barely remembered their own names, only remembering silvers of their previous life, and they wouldn't last against a school that apparently has now invented a whole system just to get rid of pest animals-- mice included, filled to the brim with geniuses too, whether student or teacher, that was why Sunny Moor's top school had kept their prestigious ranks above all in their nation, on paper or in action. Why else was that university entry percentage always at 100%?
It would be risky to join an organization with so many odds against them.
As if on cue, Jeremy spots a shape scuttle out of the school gates, and he squints his eyes at the dark figure, noting how the figure haphazardly slung a bag over their shoulder, armfuls of papers clutched tightly to their chest as they stumbled towards the exit. Another figure follows, seemingly providing some small talk between the pair, with some exchanges of drink, he assumes from how one hands a boxed drink to the other, and he leaps down from his ledge to get a more adequate gander.
Two students, perhaps? Jeremy wasn't sure, well, he and the others were special rats, but limited by biology, he still fucking sucked in the sight department, the figures seemed too blurry to discern clearly at such a near distance, but it was enough to know these people were most likely students, going home after a long study night, was it already finals week? Jeremy felt a sense of heaviness settle in his gut, was it sentimentality or plain old envy?
Managing to keep focus on the human pair without immediately recoiling at the bright glare of the streetlamps, he listened as the first guy seemed to bid their goodbyes to their companion, before strutting off around the corner towards the bus stop-- most likely, if his memory didn't fail him yet. their buddy stood waving for a moment, before making their movements towards the other direction.
"Ah, just a mundane occasion of deadline fighting with friends, must be." Jeremy hums to no one in particular. It wasn't a farfetched theory, considering he was one of those students who would never ever hand in their homework early and would often spend his days and nights cooped up at school with a sleeping bag and copious copious amounts of energy drinks he bought en-masse from the school vending machines with Dorothy in the library just to catch up to the cutthroat deadlines he found impossible to tackle without some... creative shortcuts.
However, when Jeremy refocused back to the scene on hand, instead of watching the students peacefully part their ways back home, what met his horrified eyes was the frantic, glassy gaze of a teenager of his age, spasming, convulsing weakly on the concrete floor, white-knuckled hands locked in a painful clutch on their chest as a trace of what would’ve been an ear-splitting scream was swiftly cut off by an interrupting retch to their side, heaving and coughing desperately for air as flowing tears sliding down pale bruising blue skin tainted the floor in dark spotted shadows.
If Jeremy could choke or throw up, maybe he would, but he’s not even sure if rodents could vomit that way, but the familiar symptoms of pain in the unfortunate victim struck a chord he didn’t even ascertain he had, a brief nudge at a static blur of a memory that reeked of bitter almonds…
He shouldn’t be so fast to let out whatever the fuck is in that soup sludge from earlier, because as if he was some dramatic reveal scene in an action movie, the second he set his paw out to get a nearer inspection of the crime scene (-partially attributed to his poor ratsight), the sound of footsteps alerted him of the presence of another potential passerby, and he hastily scrambles back to the shadows, watching (-or rather, hearing) the new entree into the scene approach the convulsing body.
Instead of hearing something of a scream or panicked mumblings, or rather, anything that would be considered normal for– oh I don’t know, finding the corpse of a student right in front of the school gates, Jeremy instead was met with the calm and commandeering voice of the principal, though a distance away was amplified a notch by his now susceptible ears, and like a splash of icy water, brought his hyperactive senses to a single target with the fuel of a blitzing deep hatred working in tandem with morbid curiosity.
"I knew I picked the right student for the job." A pause, Jeremy couldn't figure out what the principal was doing-- not like he was alive for when he ended up the same way. She scoffs, seemingly a response to a response he couldn’t perceive from his angle. "Take her away. This is what happens when they can’t seem to even meet the bare minimum. How did such…” She pauses again . “... failures even get past our assessments?”
Teachers (--why are they here? I thought they weren't involved?) that Jeremy assumed were flanking the principal earlier when she "wandered" out dragging the lump in his mosaic vision out of sight, tailing their boss off to where he assumed was back into the campus building.
Jeremy watches as the supposed innocents wipe away the evidence of Satan's brief doing without complaint, before slinking tentatively back into the dark suffocating confines of the PE closet, something similar to betrayal settling quietly deep in his stomach, keeping his tangerine eyes straight ahead back into the dimness of the base to seek out the people-- or rats he wanted to, needed to relay this information to, pronto.
He was wrong, once again, and that realization set in like acid in his vitals, a fire scorching his insides with a pain that rivalled the poisons he ingested himself, stank more acridly than the acetous almonds that pervaded the rotting body he left behind in that dank, moonless closet, a pungent reminder of his only mistake he willingly took in stride in his life that was cut short by something he could only describe as vindictive and relentless.
A force that dragged the innocent into the hidden maelstrom that stormed within the confines of Sunny Moor on the basis of something as petty as status and image.
On second thought, the Rat Revolution could use some more hands…-or paws.