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Valerie had a small dilemma.
Aaravi was very pretty, and had this adorable charm to her that Valerie found wonderful. She often stated that Valerie was one of the only monsters she could stand when she bought weapons of questionable origin from her, and as prom grew closer, that made Aaravi’s heart a-flutter.
Her sales had been good lately. That Vicky kid had bought a ghost costume before running off to lunch to flirt with Polly, Amira had given her twelve entire monster dollars for a vial of angel’s blood, Oz literally bought a PR agent to help him get in good favor with Liam, and Brian hadn’t actually bought anything because he was kind of an asshole. She still admired his game in trying to get with two guys at once, and if he was smarter than he was horny, she would have asked him for help with the Aaravi issue.
Unfortunately, pretty much every monster who anyone cared about was kind of a moron, so she was stuck. Everyone but Joy, Hope, Faith, and her sister. Well, and Liam, but if she had to hear him talk pretentiously about ‘80s movies and authors from like 300 years ago one more time she couldn’t be held responsible for what she did.
Talking to Vera about her crush on Aaravi would be weird, so she opted to go to her other three best friends. Besides, they’d appreciate a romantic subplot.
“She’s just... cute, is all? I know she mostly just wants to buy my stuff, which I really appreciate. But being the one monster that a girl can stand is kind of high praise,” Valerie found herself telling them. All three of the witches had bright smiles on their faces at her explanation.
“That’s so cute!” they said in sync.
“Jinx,” Hope managed to get out before any of the others could. Faith chuckled quietly at that.
“If she buys things from you, you could have her buy something asking her out,” Joy suggested. “Nothing expensive. Or just slip her a note the next time she buys something. I’ll bet she’d appreciate it.”
Every day, Valerie was happier to have these people as her friends. Sure, giving Aaravi a love note would be a little embarrassing, but it’s far from the most ridiculous shit that people have done to confess their love at this school. Besides, Valerie felt like she’d be into the cute and mundane.
“That sounds sweet, actually,” she responded. “I think Aaravi might actually like it.”
Faith patted her on the back. “If you need help writing the letter, just let me know.”
Joy nodded. “Yeah! Faith helps us all out with our writing assignments when saving the world gets to be a little too much. She’s a great writer.”
“Man, I’ll have to sit by her for the AP exam.”
“Hey, cheaters never prosper!” Joy said only half-playfully. Valerie just winked at her.
“Right, I’m kidding. Thanks, though. I’m glad you guys are here for me.”
“No problem! Let us know what it’s like at prom with her!” Hope said cheerfully. Valerie laughed.
“If she’s okay with going with me.”
“It isn’t exactly a big ‘if’,” Faith pointed out. “She’s nicer to you than most of us.”
“Hm. Maybe. I think I’m going to start on either that letter or my homework, so I’ll text you guys later.”
Joy gasped. “Yeah, I still have some notes due tomorrow! I’d better work on those too; we’ve got a quest to start on tomorrow.”
“See you, Val!” Hope called to her.
With that, they waved goodbye to each other, and Valerie managed to occupy herself with some magical mathematics. Man, math was boring no matter how important it was to some of the spells they were learning. At least this way, she could blow shit up on purpose rather than waiting for her incredibly stupid classmates to do it for her by accident, or waiting for two particularly specific students (who will remain unnamed) to blow the wrong shit up entirely on purpose and high-five over their epic prank.
By the time she was able to start on her letter to Aaravi, Vera had already texted her asking if she was staying after that day. She wasn’t, but if they took the bus like all of those poor people did, she would have missed it. She shot back a quick “nope, heading to the car now” before walking over to the parking lot.
“Is something going on? You seem nervous,” Vera noted as Valerie got into the driver’s seat. “I’d rather not get into a crash today, so if you’re too stressed to drive right, I’ll do it.”
“I thought you loved property damage. And, uh, is it that obvious?”
“I love it when it’s exclusively someone else’s property, and only when they either deserved it or if it’s economically beneficial to me. I’m not that much of a cold-hearted bitch.” Vera sat back, looking her sister over to look at any telltale signs. “And of course I can tell. We’ve been sisters since I was three, Val. I know your every weakness.”
“And I know yours. Watch your back, sis.”
Vera smiled, but didn’t accept that as an answer, staring expectantly. Valerie sighed as she started up the car.
“It’s nothing. There’s a cute girl who buys weapons from me, and I’ve been thinking about asking her to prom.”
“Hm, if she buys weapons... then give her a personalized message on one and charge extra for it. I’ll see what I can do with one of my pyramid schemes, or I could ask Miranda if she has a blacksmith serf or something like that-“
“I’m not charging double-A more just to ask her out. I was thinking of just giving her a letter the next time she buys something.”
“You can just give her a fancy knife. She probably loves those. I mean, I would certainly love if a girl gave me a murder weapon with some style to it.”
Valerie nodded. “Maybe you’re right... hm, think you could hook me up with one of Miranda’s serfs? I think you get along with her better than I do.”
Smiling at her, Vera responded. “Of course. Be glad we’re sisters so I don’t have to charge you.”
“I’m glad you’re a part of my family, V. Even if it’s just because of the money I save because of you.”
Vera huffed, pouting at Valerie. “I can’t believe you already understand the nuances of targeted harassment. I taught you well.”
A few days and a good amount of exploitation of Miranda’s poor serfs later, Valerie had a dagger. It was beautiful—the handle had a rose carved into it, and had a gorgeous golden sheen. The blade, meanwhile, had a thick base and a sharp tip, and was an almost rosy shade of silver. The most noticeable feature, however, was the carving. ‘PROM?’ was spelled out in gorgeous calligraphy on the blade, before being filled in with a darker metal to avoid loss of functionality. It was perfectly crafted, like one would expect a royal to have, and fit perfectly into a deceptively plain leather sheath. If that serf had a name or known location, Valerie would thank him, but Miranda couldn’t keep track of her serfs without the help of her tracking serf, and she didn’t know where that one was, either. How the hell did princesses even function?
All that was left was to text Aaravi, so she did. The message read ‘yo aaravi, sit with me at lunch ive got a sick new blade for you for seven monster dollars”, which she figured would work just fine. Usually, she charged a bit more for the weapons she sold, but she didn’t have to pay at all to get this one—plus, she was nervous enough about this already, in all honesty. Discounts were the language of love for the Oberlin family.
Aaravi’s repsonse came back fairly quickly. “hell yeah thank you! what material?”
“silver. and mystery metal for the carving”
“YO ITS CARVED thats so sick! ok class now see you at lunch”
Bold of Aaravi to assume that Valerie was in class. Well, she was, but she had her table of stuff with her. The life of a businesswoman was just like that.
Class was mostly mundane, since everyone was just giving presentations about different magical creatures. Valerie had been one of the first ones to go, so she wasn’t really worried about it (besides the fact that she might have trouble getting a great grade on a presentation about Mothman that exclusively referred to him as ‘the man, the moth, the legend’). She was a bit more worried about finally asking Aaravi to prom, although not nearly as worried as some of her weird classmates were. Seriously, Vicky seemed to spend every second of her life at Polly’s side at this point, and Brian almost burnt down the auditorium for the sake of flirting.
As lunch arrived, Valerie found that her nerves had calmed a bit. After all, this was basically just a business transaction, and it wasn’t like Aaravi would realize immediately.
Aaravi showed up with her monster dollars in hand, and Valerie accepted them.
“Glad you could make it, double-A.” Valerie picked up the sheathed blade from off the table, which she was sure could be a double entendre of some sort if she really thought about it, handing them over to her.
“No problem! Thanks for this. My old dagger was starting to wear down a little.” She pulled it out, eyes drawn to the handle. “Is that a rose? It looks great! Man, I can’t wait to slice up some pricks with th-“
Her gaze moved to the blade, and the carving on it. It was elegant, certainly, and Valerie hoped that her surprise was mostly at the gorgeous work.
Aaravi’s face grew bright red, and she covered it with the hand not currently occupied by a dagger. Granted, that hand had the sheath in it, but one great lesson in life is that one always needs to take what they can get.
“I... I’ve gotta go get food!” Aaravi said, before sprinting in the direction that was very much not towards the lunch line. She ducked behind the vending machine before taking out either her phone or a sword—it was kind of hard to tell.
It turned out to be her phone, because Valerie received a text just a few minutes later.
“YES!!! YES”
Then another, which turned into a trilogy. Luckily, the third text wasn’t split up into two parts.
“SORRY I RAN OFF BUT YOURE JUST GOING TO HAVE TO DEAL WITB THAT ALSO YES!”
“*WITH”
“so where do you want to meet up? i can do your house or mine but mines kind of far from here and i dont know where yours is”
Valerie found herself smiling as she texted back, working on confirming all the details. She wondered if she and Vera could save some money by riding in the same limo.
But anyway, prom night was awesome! Aaravi showed up in a pretty blue dress with a deep v collar and let her hair down, nervously adjusting a flower in her hair when Valerie first saw her.
It turns out that taking cute photos with your new girlfriend and the dagger you gave her—because seriously, this school had no rules about possession of deadly weapons—was a really good way to fall in love all over again.