Key of Souls: Twisted Wonderland

Dawn's POV

After finally catching up to Grim after my collision with the boy at the library, we somehow managed to make it to the cafeteria on time to meet with Ace for our punishment; from cleaning all of Main Street to running from the library, the both of us were pretty exhausted and ready to get this over with.

"I'm already beat from cleaning all day...Now we have to wash a hundred windows, too...", complained Grim.

"We've got no choice Grim", I told him. "If you're over it then just get it done." Honestly, I just wanted to get this whole thing over with so that I could take a closer look at the weird book I found at the library.

"That Ace guy sure is taking his sweet time. Who does he think he is, making me wait! I'm pissed", Grim said as we were waiting for Ace.

I looked around to see that jerk hasn't even shown up, yet he was also tasked with washing 100 with us. "He should be here already? Just what is taking him so long?", I said as I was already getting impatient. We were just sitting on one of the cafeteria benches waiting for him to get started on this, growing more and more frustrated with his absence.

After an hour of waiting, I was almost ready to snap when Grim beat me to the punch. "..........I don't care what happened, this is too late!", Grim exclaimed. Then he jumped up and said, "Wait, he wouldn't just skip out, right!?"

Normally I would try not to jump to conclusions, but after our first meeting with him and waiting for so long I had to agree with his theory. "Come on Grim, let's go look for him.", I told him as I was ready to drag his butt here.

"I'm not gonna let him get away with putting all the punishment on us!", Grim declared looking just as angry as I was. "Let's go, minion! We're gonna catch Ace and make him do all the window washing." At this point, I didn't care about Grim calling me a minion or not, just as long as Ace is doing this punishment with us.

I quickly went down the school halls looking all over for Ace with Grim in my arms, then I thought that he could still be in the classroom and went to check it out.

Once we arrived, Grim jumped out of my arms and proclaimed, "Oraaaa! Where's Ace!? We're not gonna let you hide away!" But nobody answered since the whole classroom was empty. "...Ah, there's nobody here!?", Grim wondered.

"No. I'm here.", said a voice right behind us. We turned around and to our surprise, the voice belonged to a picture of a man with a beard and mustache wearing a top hap, a monocle and a fancy dress coat.

"Ffgyaaaaaaaa!! The picture talked!!", shouted Grim in fright after witnessing who was talking to us.

"Aaaahhhh!!", I also shirked thinking that the talking painting might be haunted.

"What now? It's not uncommon for paints to talk at this school. The Wall Lady over there, the Wall Gentleman over here, everyone can speak.", the Wall Portrait explained as he presented the other portraits that are here as well. "Portraits can speak because they have a mouth. That's normal, you know?"

"Normally, paintings don't speak.", I answered back still in shock.

"Your "normal" and my "normal" differ in regards to our quirk. Isn't that true?", the Wall Portrait asked me.

I pondered for a bit, then I remembered that I'm in a world of magic so talking paintings must be "normal" here. "I'm sorry for being rude, it's just that the paintings in my world don't speak at all and I didn't think any of the ones in this school would.", I explained as I gave an apologetic bow to the portrait.

"It's alright my dear, I'm glad you understand. Honestly, it's nice to have a polite young lady in this school compared to all the boys I've seen over the years.", said the Wall Portrait said with a smile on his face which pleased me. With this misunderstanding all cleared up, he then said, "That aside, who are you looking for?"