THE BEAST ─ five hargreeves

[ 009 ] five proposes with a ring-pop

IX.

f i v e p r o p o s e s
w i t h a r i n g - p o p

—ALLISON HARGREEVES was a nice lady.

Zara had to continually remind herself of this fact while the woman was mutilating her scalp with a hairbrush, to stop from turning to a lynx and gouging her eyes out.

She had arrived at the Umbrella Academy with Five and Klaus about an hour ago, after a very long taxi ride where Five took every opportunity to whine about not being able to just blink over there because he now had to, "work as a team with a load of mentally unstable dingbats."

To be fair, he wasn't entirely inaccurate.

Zara watched her reflection in the vanity mirror of Allison's bedroom with disinterest. She was wearing a little mascara for the very first time. Zara hadn't ever worn makeup, not because she had any qualms about being seen as girly—there was nothing wrong with that, of course—but because Lila had gone through the smoky eye phase when they were younger and just never grew out of it.

Some days, she would be walking around the Commission looking like a raccoon that was high on opioids. Zara wasn't taking any chances in the makeup department.

The girl had showered and changed out of her ratty old clothes, revealing—to Allison's horror—a second garter snake and one rather large tarantula that had been hiding away in her pocket for what must've been a very long time.

And, of course, Brutus. The lizard basked on one of Allison's magazine covers with a slight smile on his little face, taking in the last rays before sunset. It was a quarter to six now, and they had better get moving if they wanted to snatch the keys from Biggs' while he was at dinner.

"You have very pretty hair," Allison commented, as she proceeded to violate Zara's pain threshold, "But, why do the ends look like—"

"Someone hacked it off with a machete?" offered Zara, "Because that's exactly what happened, and that someone was my sister. There's a reason they say, 'Don't try this at home, kids.'"

Allison's rose-tinted lips formed an 'O'. She had taken a liking to this odd young girl who had befriended her brother, despite the extremely worrying posse of animals going around with her. Five had seemed significantly less hostile when he came by to tell Allison she needed to make Zara look presentable. The woman didn't mind, and being an A-list actress, Allison knew a thing or two about dressing up.

It was especially fun with Zara, because she was quite a pretty girl despite her insistence on dressing like a colour blind wombat.

Five had good taste in women.

Number Three hummed as she dragged her fingers through Zara's hair, twisting and curling it in all the right places so that it might soon become something beautiful.

Or, at the very least, something—anything—other than the shockingly disastrous rats' nest it once was that seemingly defied the laws of physics.

Newton would be turning in his grave.

"Are you absolutely certain you don't have anything else I could wear?"

She glanced at Zara in the mirror, who was desperately tugging at her tie, trying to loosen it. Seeing as Allison hadn't packed any clothes for a fifteen year old, the only option was her old UA-issued uniform. It was a generic schoolgirl outfit, with a collared white blouse under a plaid knee-length dress; a navy blazer and high socks, but that wasn't the reason Zara disliked it.