Glass Mountain (Walther)

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Same dumb time and same dumb place. For a whole hour of discomfort, there sure came a lot of relief with it. For one, there wasn't anybody in her head rifling through her deepest, darkest secrets. For two, she wasn't in anybody else's head learning more about them and what they really thought than she ever wanted to know. For three....Temperance could relax the way she wanted without the risk of being chastised for being improper again.

The girl sat back in the comfortable reading chair, slouching with one sole on the coffee table in the center of the sitting area. Her brown hair was pulled down into a low side ponytail, curled so that it draped down over her right shoulder. She kept her knees in tight, though, so there was little chance of anyone looking up her skirt. Temperance knew that much at least. She cared very little, however, about the rest of her posture and how unladylike it came across.

Just like the other day when her sister was there, Temperance was spending her time on a collection of comic books. The assortment was different, but nonetheless still could be mistaken as the same to the untrained eye. After all, the girls looked the same, so their interests must be the same too, right? Yup, they looked so much the same and were considered such that she was certain that her teacher for this class period didn't even realize that it was Charity instead attending that class instead of Temperance. That was, at least, one reason to love her sister. She allowed Temperance to take a break from a class that, while interesting, she didn't want to have to go to every day.

She flipped the page of the comic she was reading, biting her lip as the story progressed through excitement.

[Walther Ebersbacher]

It was a little late on the return. He had to keep it for another night since Darian sprung a complete surprise that took up the night beforehand. He felt really, really bad about it, and he'd apologize to Charity for it. She was a nice girl, though. She'd totally understand, or so he hoped. Manga clutched against his chest, cradled as though it were an expensive vase, he ran throughout the institute, feet pounding against the ground.

He threw open the door to the library, eyes darting left and right. And he saw her. He didn't question it for a second. He said he'd return it, and last time he saw her, Charity was there, propped up on the couch, with a stack of various comics and manga.

"I am so, so sorry I'm late in returning this." Walther sounded absolutely exhausted, as if he was saying this on the same breath he used to run in. One day, it could have been an overreaction, but Walther wasn't one to break an arrangement or promise. He should have found her first and asked.

There was no point in reflecting, though. It happened how it happened. Walther gingerly set the book down atop the others. Now he was hoping to any power that Charity would be fine with it. "I just had to keep it for another night so I could read it... I couldn't yesterday."

It was a good book, though. He enjoyed reading it, and was fairly interested in picking up the rest of the series. And maybe, just maybe, if Charity was indeed charitable, she'd let him borrow the rest despite what had happened? Or he could start on another series, sample the bunch, see which one he liked the most.

Intending to stay for a while, Walther dropped down on the armchair he was resting in prior, and took a moment to catch his breath.

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Temperance had tunnel vision something fierce and so paid little notice of the things going on around her, especially when she was so deeply involved in such an action packed scene. She flipped the pages, one right after the other, as her eyes panned over the still-framed battle sequence. And so she barely noticed when the little boy came rushing in and started speaking to her.

Just these last few pages…..or maybe two more….surely just until the end of this chapter….

It was when the boy started explaining himself that Temperance managed to peel her eyes away to glance at the noisy boy standing beside her….only to realize that he was talking to her.

She looked up at him with a semi-blank look, her lower lip protruding slightly, until she snapped up straight in a sudden bout of recognition. "Oh!" she exclaimed. It was strange though, not directly recognizing. It was a vague sort of memory, one of Charity's, and so was more like remembering something she had watched rather than something she had experienced.

Temperance looked upon the boy, glancing him up and down like she was trying to confirm something then straight out said, "You're Walther! Aren't you?" She took her feet down from the table and scooted forward in her chair for a more interactive posture. "Well, am I right?" she urged with a smile.

[Walther Ebersbacher]

Wait... This wasn't Charity.

He had to laugh at the circumstance, putting a hand on his forehead and just chuckling for a fleeting moment. Oh man. That was such a dumb mistake on his part! Well... Not really, they actually looked truly, fully similar. Maybe there was some subtle difference he just couldn't pin, but in that moment, in that moment he really wasn't examining the situation fully, in that brief panic.

"Yes." came the reply after he had his little laugh. "I'm sorry, I thought you were your sister, and I told her I'd get this book back... Ohhhh..." He really should have known. His panic settled, and was replaced with just a cool, semi-collected tone and attitude.

"It's really nice to meet you. You must be Temperance." That was a name that really stood out in his mind. One part because he only spoke to Charity two days ago, another part being that it was just such an uncommon name. The name of a virtue, though. It was easy to see why their parents would name them after virtues. They were twins! That was lucky of itself.

She didn't seem mad that he'd mixed them up, leading him to believe that something to this effect happened all of the time. What if he had a twin brother? Agh, that'd be awful. So many opportunities for mischief, but so annoying, to have that mistake always present. To have to explain to a lot of people that he was indeed one, and not the other.

He didn't want to indicate that he was cutting the conversation, so he kept his butt in the seat. "Do you think you could tell Charity I'm sorry for being late?"

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Temperance might not have been the one who met Walther last time, but she felt like she already knew him. Like she was meeting for the first time a celebrity that she'd followed all her life and had learned everything she could about, even though what she knew was just the things that her sister Charity had procured. She shook her head. "No! That's fine, actually. It happens to us all the time. Even our parents get us confused sometimes." She laughed, showing her teeth in a bright smile. "Then again, we really don't make it any easier for them, especially since…well, sisters share clothes, don't they?" Not that he'd know, he was clearly not a sister.

The sisters also had a bad habit of pretending to be the other. And then they would get upset when the person they were trying to trick couldn't see past it. It was a contradictory feeling. They wanted to be seen and treated as different people, but they didn't want to put the effort into being so radically different that others could tell the difference. Why should they have to put that effort in anyway? Temperance was Temperance and Charity was Charity. Even if they were similar they were different. A lot of people didn't seem to get that.

But this gestaltism….

"Yes, I am." Temperance nodded, her cheeks painted a sheepish pink at the familiarity. She didn't even have to give her name, which she always felt a little shy about when it happened, more so when she had no clear reason for why they would know(such as in the case of the Cheng twins). But Walther here had heard about Temperance from her sister, so it was to be expected. "It's nice to meet you too, Walther. Charity told me…well, she didn't exactly tell me, but I know about you from her."

The boy was staying. Good. Temperance wasn't sure if he would, but she wanted to talk to this boy that Charity seemed to not dislike right away. The girl nodded again. "Yes, I can do that. Though I'm sure it's fine," she said with a shrug. "They're just books after all. We can always get more." And they probably would have if Walther hadn't given them back. "Did you like them?" she inquired, mildly curious.

[Walther Ebersbacher]

They're just books, after all. Of course they were. He was just being silly, or rather, just being himself. He liked friends. He liked having people be able to trust him. They were both important to him. Promises were promises he kept. Even if it was something as trivial as returning a book on time, he couldn't help but feel a little bit crushed when he'd realized that he kept it a whole day over the time he'd promised to return it.

He didn't feel so bad about mistaking one for the other. If their parents got them wrong in some instances... If anything, for that, he only felt a little bit silly. "That must have been really hard on your parents sometimes." He smiled a bit, not showing teeth too often, unless it was accompanied with a laugh, or something that just really made him happy. But, no matter what, there were always visible dimples.

"I did enjoy the book. I was really skeptical because I'm not often a fan of graphical novels... I like Batman, but not much else." This impressed him in a way, just how much story they could convey through graphics with minimal text blurbs. He was invested, and wanted to start a little collection of his own. Maybe it'd lighten up his quarter of the dorm.


He looked down at her own pile. A mountain of these books, the same as Charity's. He knew the answer, so, instead of asking and looking like either an idiot or someone who didn't care at all, he simply stated "I see you like graphical novels, too."

They were gestalts, he knew that, but didn't really understand what it meant, yet. Did that mean they had all of the same interests, or most of them? He so wanted to pry and find out first-hand from them, but that would have just been so rude.

[Deleted]

"I suppose," Temperance said half-heartedly. "It serves them right for not paying attention anyhow." The twins barely had to try to get their fathers mistaking one for the other. Sometimes they weren't even trying. Of course this made them bitter about their similar looks, when not even their parents could tell them apart! And of course the girls did nothing, maybe only the bare minimum, to differentiate themselves visually. After all, why should they have to be the ones to change just because nobody else paid attention?

It was clearly everybody else's fault and not their own.

Temperance smirked. "Batman is one of my favorites. He always has such interesting villains." Obviously the villains were the best part. "A couple years back, Charity and I went as Harley Quinn for Halloween." Both of them, though they stylized it up by changing some of the colors of her outfit.

While Temperance and Charity did have many similar interests, if one looked closely they'd see that the two of them still varies quite a bit even in their commonalities. For example, as Charity had told Walter last time, Charity preferred the romance and flowery types of manga, while Temperance liked the fighting ones with the hard and sharp visuals. This could be seen in the pile of books that Walther noticed as it contained mostly titles like Bleach, One Piece, Psyren, and Blue Exorcist.

But if he hadn't been into comics other than Batman before, it's not surprising that he didn't know the difference.

"They're called manga," she corrected as if he'd just committed some terrible taboo. Then Temperance bothered to explain. "They're from Japan, so you have to use the Japanese word for it."

[Walther Ebersbacher]

Manga, that was right. A keyword he forgot since last time. He was just used to seeing them plainly. They were novels, they had intricate stories. But, at the same time, the graphics and art set it apart from merely an illustrated book. It was a story that told itself through both visuals and words, instead of words with visuals wrapped around them. He had to smile when she recalled the time they went as Harley Quinn.

"I think you'd make a really good Poison Ivy, or Batgirl." It seemed kind of odd to go as the same character, then again, they were gestalts. Maybe it was just something habitual that he couldn't pretend to understand. At least he was good at treating them both like their own unique selves, instead of making the faux pas of combining the two, like they were a single mind within two bodies.

Because clearly, when he spotted some of the covers, that wasn't the case. The one he borrowed from Charity didn't seem nearly as gritty as these ones did. He liked grit, it just seemed to make the story, and the dialogue, that much more important, without having the need to speak in paragraphs to outline the story. "I think I've seen this one before." He pointed to Bleach.

When he was told that he had to use the Japanese word, he felt as if he'd just done something awful. That didn't make him racist, did it? "Right, manga... I keep forgetting that." He still smiled brightly, even if his mind had a stutter of self-doubt for a moment or two.

[Deleted]

"No, it has to be Harley Quinn. Because our name is Quinn." Temperance rolled her eyes with an amused smile. It was so obvious, she shouldn't have to explain that, but it was funny still that she had to. Also, Tempy was flattered by his other suggestions. "Actually, we considered those too. We definitely wanted to do Harley Quinn, but couldn't agree on what the other costume would be. And even if we had, we would have fought over who got to be what. So our fathers told us to just both of us go as the same thing." It really was a dumb argument, but the compromise was satisfactory. Though it was times like that that Temperance didn't wish they were triplets or quintuplets so they could do all the costumes at once…but then they might all have wanted the same thing, so maybe instead a power of duplication? That would have been much better than this gestaltism.

Temperance's eyes fell to the cover of the book Walther pointed out and her smile brightened. "Yes! That one is one of my favorites!" Now it was on, though. Temperance had curled her legs underneath her bum and re-situated herself to face the boy better. "The manga-ka is very clever, I like the humor the best." And, of course, the fight scenes. "Of course, I like the book better than the anime. They put too many useless things in there." She seemed to be pretty upset about this.

Temperance smiled, satisfied when he corrected himself. Hopefully he'd get it right the next time. She couldn't stand when people called manga 'graphic novels' or 'comic books'. They were totally different things! Even worse, was when people tried drawing in the anime style, released their own series, and called it "manga". It didn't come from Japan, so it wasn't manga, the idiots!

[Walther Ebersbacher]

"Huh... I think that's pretty cool. I'd have liked to see that." He read comics a lot more when he was younger. Now that the collection was actually apparent, he'd have to be nice and close with these two. They were really nice girls, so that couldn't have been too hard. The fact that they had this reputation still surprised him to this day.

He'd assumed that one of them was meaner than the other, or together they formed a really troublesome duo, but he hadn't seen that. Not yet. His 'fear' that they would have just been awful to him was entirely a thing of the past. He looked back down at Bleach. Namely, at the main character, Ichigo. "I've never seen the TV show or read the manga, is it one of those really long series? I wonder how the artists keep the inspiration after all of that time."

Because drawing it had to be so much harder than just writing it. He loved his books, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, the whole assortment. But even books with illustrations in the front or back of the book were nothing compared to this. He took a moment to just flip through a few of the pages. "I really like the style on this one."

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There was definitely a good reason for why the Quinn girls had their reputation. Honestly, it did occur to Temperance that there might be something sinister that her sister was planning for their entire engagement with this boy. But so far, Temperance didn't feel the urge and she hadn't gotten any indication of it from her sister so far, so….Temperance had already put this boy on her "off-limits" list.

Well, Tempy could see why, he was rather cute, had an adorable accent, and was a delight to converse with.

Tempy wondered how long that was going to last. She knew better than anyone how quickly their interests could change. While they might be good friends with Walther today, tomorrow he could end up just being their plaything. For the most part it just depended on their attention span….and Charity's prerogative.

Temperance rocked her head to the side as she considered her question. "Well….it is a rather long series. I think right now the author is on volume…60?" Unfortunately, Temperance trailed off from the series somewhere around volume 42. Even she didn't have that much patience, for a series that wasn't ending and wasn't going anywhere. Temperance grinned. "Actually, there's a whole manga series from the same publisher that explains the entire process. Apparently it's really hard to keep it up, but if it's too popular, they won't let you stop!" She shook her head. "It sounds like arduous work."

"I do too. Truthfully, I wish I could draw this well, but neither Cherry nor me can draw very well," she admitted, grabbing another one of the books and flipping through it. "Can you? Draw that is?"