#violetta mondarev | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

aelloposchrysopterus · 11 months

Text

Ballroom Dancing and Other Monsters

Bang hates fancy parties. She hates formal etiquette. She really hates anything where she can’t solve her problems with knives, ideally in someone else’s body. But she was going to suffer through — the horrors — prom because Violetta and Zeetha wanted to go, and she wasn’t going to be a lousy friend. (She also didn’t want Gil to go alone, which would have happened, since Agatha refused to go, Tarvek was going with Violetta, Xerxesphina was Colette’s date, and Zeetha had her mysterious boyfriend, and Klaus had told his son that he was going, whether he wanted to or not.)

Bang, above all, hates formal dresses. She’d called Tarvek to find an outfit for her. He’d thought she was going to try to kill him, but when it became clear that she’d kill him if he didn’t get her a dress, he made sure to find a very pretty one for her. It was a lovely cream with crimson beadwork on the bodice, spaghetti straps, an A-line full skirt, and a deep V-neck. She did have to admit that she felt pretty in it, even if it did make her vulnerable.

“Eep,” she yelped as Zeetha zipped it up.

“Thought you were invulnerable to pain,” Zeetha remarked.

“I’m not invulnerable to having all the air squeezed out of my chest!” Bang almost reached for a knife but stopped herself. Zeetha is a friend. She means well.

“Okay, Zeetha, try to murder me now,” Violetta laughed. She was in a deep purple off-the-shoulder dress with a tiered tulle skirt. Another Tarvek selection.

Zeetha obliged, yanking Violetta’s zipper up. She was wearing a golden mermaid dress that glistened in the light, with heels and bracelets the same hue of green as her hair. Tarvek hadn’t had any hand in her outfit; she’d picked it out herself. (He had almost been insulted that she hadn’t consulted him.)

“Are we ready to party?” Zeetha asked, rolling the r in a flamboyant manner. “Come on, the limo’s waiting outside!”

“The… limo?” Was not expecting this. Bang awkwardly laughed.

Zeetha rolled her eyes. “We’re picking up the boys in style, gals!” She grabbed Bang and Zeetha by the arms and yanked them outside, plopping them in the limo. “First stop, Tarvek!”

Tarvek was waiting for them when they got to his house. He hurriedly jumped into the limo — Bang could tell that he was worried about his father and his sister trying to stop him. His father was controlling to an extreme and his sister was… ill. She knew his home life wasn’t great, which was why she felt a twinge of guilt each time she stabbed him.

“Hey, Tarvek, if you need somewhere to stay tonight, my place is yours,” she said.

He jumped up in his seat. “Thanks! I don’t think I’ll need it, but thanks anyhow!” He was wearing a purple suit that matched Violetta’s dress exactly, with a purple and blue tie and a blue pocket square. The blue was Wulfenbach blue. Don’t say a thing. Let him pine on his own. He idly adjusted his cufflinks.

“So, Zeetha, who’s getting picked up next?” Violetta asked, fiddling with her amethyst necklace.

Zeetha smiled. “Gil, of course.”

“If he’s in anything other than green, blue, and purple, it’ll be a miracle,” Tarvek muttered.

“Oh, Tarvek!” Zeetha giggled. “Don’t worry. I made sure he got a suit. It’s black, with a cream shirt and a red tie and pocket square. It matches Bang perfectly!”

Tarvek breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you so much, Zeetha. A weight has truly been lifted off my shoulder.”

Bang suddenly realized that the beads on her dress were the same shade of red as Tarvek’s hair.

At Wulfenbach’s, Gil leapt out of the house in the suit Zeetha had bought for him, bounding into the car like an excitable puppy. He flopped down next to Bang, who noted that his new shoes were scuffed up already. Tarvek saw the exact same thing and tossed some black shoe polish towards Gil.

“You’ll need to open the window while applying that,” Tarvek said.

“You had this on you?” Gil asked, incredulous.

Tarvek shrugged. “A well groomed man is always prepared… your cuffs are sewn together, aren’t they?”

“It’s better that than Gil losing a cufflink again!” Zeetha retorted. “Remember when he did that in front of Queen Albia? The Baron was embarrassed for years.”

“Hey,” Gil rolled his eyes. “I’m not the one who showed up in traditional Skifandrian attire to the wedding of one of Albia’s daughters and nearly gave her a heart attack.”

The siblings looked like they were about to punch each other for a second, but the situation defused itself. Good, that’s one more time I won’t have to patch up Gil’s outfit tonight. Zeetha slouched back in her seat as Gil rested his right leg on his left.

“Who’s next?” Violetta eagerly asked.

Zeetha tensed. “I hate to do this,” she said, “but please keep this under wraps. He’s a Jager.”

“What?” Gil turned to his sister. “Dad’s going to kill you! And how did you let the prom committee to give a guest pass to a Jager?”

She twiddled her thumbs. “I pulled some strings, and Dad doesn’t need to know about it. For what it’s worth, Mom approved. He’s a nice guy, not any fangier than I am, just, y’know, immortal. I met him at the MMA gym.” She sighed. “His name’s Axel Higgs.”

The car was silent.

“Zeetha has a boyfriend! Good job, girl!” Violetta yelled.

The mysterious Axel Higgs was picked up outside a defense contractor’s office headquarters. His suit was a distinguished ecru, with a pale golden shirt and a green tie and pocket square. He carried himself with an air of dignity and refinement. A man of many hats.

Nobody said anything when he entered the limo. He smiled at them. No fangs. He sat next to Zeetha, who silently wrapped an arm around him.

“Should we, uh, do introductions?” Bang asked.

Zeetha grinned a fangy smile. “Yeah, sure! Do you want to start?”

“Okay,” Bang said. “I’m Bang Dupree. It’s short for Bangladesh. I met Zeetha last year, I think, at a karate tournament. Our match was a draw because the refs stopped us before one of us killed the other.”

“Gil Wulfenbach, short for Gilgamesh. I’m Zeetha’s long-lost twin brother. Our parents are divorced, so I’m stuck living with our dad, who’s some high-up in the defense industry.”

“Violetta Mondarev. I met Zeetha in our film class. We were watching The Princess Bride and we bonded over the inaccuracies in the fight scenes and the poisoning scene.”

“Tarvek Sturmvoraus, Violetta’s cousin. I’m not really all that close with Zeetha — I’m a friend of Gil’s and I’m close with my cousin, so I run into her a lot, but we’ve never really hung out.” Gil blushed at “friend”.

“Axel Higgs, Zeetha’s boyfriend and Jager. I wish I could tell you more about me, but that’s unfortunately classified information.”

Violetta and Tarvek were waltzing respectably well. He’s an excellent dancer — of course he is — and she’d learned from him. She was holding her skirt up just right, and when she twirled, it was glorious. Tarvek’s pince-nez gave them the general impression of being a relic from the Victorian era.

Colette and Xerxesphina were dancing quite well, too. They were enjoying the quick tempo of the Viennese waltz, taking advantage of it to twirl about the dance floor in a modified grapevine step. This was neatly avoiding the question of who was really in the lead.

Zeetha and Higgs were in such a close embrace that it was a surprise they were able to move at all, but moving they were. Their technique was subpar, particularly when compared to Tarvek’s meticulous footwork, but they were in tune with each other in a way that almost no other couple was.

Gil and Bang, on the other hand, were miserably failing at dancing. It wasn’t just the waltz. The saraband had been such a disaster that Tarvek had broken etiquette to whisk Bang off to dance with her while Violetta attempted to instill the basics in Gil. It didn’t help matters that Gil seemed to have two left feet.

“I hate this,” she whispered.

“I know,” he hissed back. “Could you at least try a bit harder?”

“Why should I keep trying when you’re the one who’s blundering the moves?”

Gil looked like he was ten seconds away from being arrested for attempted murder. “How about you think of this as a monster you want to kill?”

“Already trying,” she said. And it’s not working.

Later, they were all taking a break from dancing. Colette and Xerxesphina had gone off to “brush up their makeup”. More like “brush up on making out”. Tarvek was fixing his tie knot — his Eldredge had become asymmetrical, and he couldn’t stand it anymore. Gil and Higgs were enjoying discussing Jager history.

This meant that Bang, Violetta, and Zeetha were sitting at a table, drinking Arnold Palmers and munching on cake, chatting a little bit as they pleased to. Zeetha was a bit pissed that her brother was monopolizing her boyfriend (“especially since he’s got his own boyfriend here, too”), while Violetta was complaining about how sore her feet were (“with him, it’s always aesthetic over function, and it’s not like he’s ever tried dancing in these shoes”). Bang was just fiddling with her straw, listening to her friends.

She was also the first one to notice the monster when it came crashing through the ceiling.

“Guys. Look.” She gently shoved Violetta and Zeetha. “Is that just me, or is that something we can fight?”

“Oh yeah,” Zeetha’s eyes glazed over as their classmates began screaming. “Let’s go fight this thing.” She snatched one of Violetta’s shoes and snapped the heel off. “It’s improvised weapons time!”

Violetta took her other shoe and snapped its heel off, while Bang took an entire table leg. Zeetha passed the other heel to Violetta to grab an entire chair. Violetta complemented her heels by taking a hair pin out of a nearby dancer’s coiffure.

The Fighting Girls Tea and Cake Society started running after the monster, ready to take it down.

Maybe formal dances aren’t all so bad.

Read on AO3.

#girl genius #my fanfic #girl genius event week #may 24 prompt #bang dupree #zeetha #violetta mondarev #gil wulfenbach #tarvek sturmvoraus #axel higgs #fighting girls tea and cake society #prom au

37 notes · View notes