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The university students all called them the Crows. Some referred to them as the Murder, some the freaks, but most just said the Crows. They lived in one of the six person apartments on campus, like they had been since sophomore year. They were, according to the psychologist who saw them whenever he was allowed to, scarily codependent with each of the other five. To the point where one person leaving the group would irreparably damage each person’s mental state, even the self professed bastard without emotion.
According to the other students, they were fucking terrifying.
Kaz Brekker was the unofficial-official leader, but each Crow was not to be trifled with. College lore said that Wylan had once blown up a dorm room, for reasons unknown, Inej had stabbed former Professor Heleen, now deceased, Jesper had two guns with him at all times, and once took out six gang members on his own. Nina had once used a combination of salt and shock factor to give a man a heart attack, and Matthias had been accused of beating up the entire men’s hockey team after they were caught attempting to force one of the cheerleaders to have sex with each of them.
Kaz had more legends than all the others combined, but these were only passed along in whispers. Tales of him shattering someone’s leg for touching him on the shoulder, pushing a man off a roof for simply annoying him, and more. The college students had collectively decided that anyone who messed with the Crows was on their own.
There had been unfortunate incidents involving two freshmen attempting to find out the relationships between the Crows, but that had swiftly been resolved. They had not even concluded one singular relationship by the time they were dissuaded from continuing.
But then an ambitious freshman had broken into Dean Rollins office and uncovered the Crows’ incident reports, and released them to the college at large.
Kuwei Yul-Bo, you will be missed.
- incident one: wylan hendricks
In his defense, he hadn’t meant to blow it up quite so spectacularly.
He had only wanted to scare some of the incoming freshmen off of messing with his family. But he had miscalculated the amount of magnesium needed to make a small explosion with large smoke and instead made a large explosion with large smoke.
He maybe shouldn’t have been doing the math while eyeing Jesper the night before. Whoops.
Nobody died, which was good. But the Dean did nearly revoke his scholarship, only stopped by the fact that he lied his ass off and said that it had spilled on his way to the chem lab to experiment. That and his innocent looking face- Inej had been right about him looking like a cinnamon roll instead of the crazy bastard he was.
In the end, mission accomplished. The freshmen were suitably terrified of him now. All’s well that ends well, after all.
- incident two: inej ghafa
She hadn’t even stabbed her in a fatal area. It was only her arm. And there was video footage of Heleen attempting to kidnap her.
Again.
She ended up dead in prison before the trial even started. She almost wished Kaz had let her handle it. Sankt Petyr needed a bit of blood on his blade, and it would have been a nice exercise.
- incident three: jesper fahey
Honestly, what did they expect him to do, die?
He’s not suicidal, just stupid sometimes. Of course he fought back, and if three of them didn’t make it to the hospital before chasing the light, it was not his fault. He quite likes being alive. And they had attacked while he was with Wylan.
Wylan was too sweet to die. At least that’s what he was saying to the cops. They didn’t need to know about him wanting to wake up sleeping men to shoot them.
But there had been bystanders who saw them shooting at Jesper before Jesper shot back. So he was released on a self-defense ruling. The other three mysteriously died in prison before the trial happened.
They all knew it was Kaz. He really did not like others threatening his people.
- incident four: nina zenik
She hadn’t meant to kill him, honest. She thought he’d pass out from the shock and wake up later. She had not known about his heart problems when she fed him oversalted food and jumpscared him.
Oopsy Daisy.
The police had bought the crying nurse aid act at least, and given that she’d called emergency services immediately they had dismissed it as natural causes. All she had to do was be assigned a different patient so she could complete her credit and she was home free.
Not her best moment. Oh well. Thank you Kaz, for knowing she’s more useful with a degree.
- incident five: matthias helvar
He hadn’t meant to hurt them that badly.
No, that was a lie. He had completely meant to put them in the hospital for a long fucking time. They shouldn’t have picked a fight with him by attempting to hurt someone. He might be the moral compass for all the Crows, but his is a bit skewed as well. Just, less skewed.
He was a former religious doomsday witch hunter cult member, after all. And once he left that occupation he had needed money. Street fighting wasn’t that difficult, and he had been seventeen- odds were never in his favor but he always won. Placed bets on himself at twenty-to-one odds and collected his rent money when he left.
The only one he hadn’t beat to hell had been the one who they had already beat up for trying to stop them. The captain, Aleksander whatshisname, who liked to be called the Darkling, for some godforsaken reason, was already having a shitty night.
The girl, Genya, had bitten off half of Darkling Dumbass Dickwad’s dick before he had gotten there to help beat them up. He should introduce her to Nina, they would get along. The only decent person on the hockey team, according to him, was a former street rat named Mal who had thought Darkling Duck was a terrible person before this, and now hated his guts.
His best friend Alina had dated him for a while at the beginning of the year, but broke up with him when she learned he had stalked her since he met her in freshman year. He had engineered a meet cute and pretended not to know her until he had completely fucked up her mental health and made her feel like she was going crazy.
He decided the blood on his knuckles was worth it the minute he spotted what he was doing to Genya, but he wished he’d done just a little bit more. Genya and Mal’s own little group of codependent traumatized teenagers and twenty somethings came to get them, and the ambulance came to get the hockey team.
He did exchange contact information with the leader of the codependent family. Kaz would be interested in doing business with them, especially if they were who he thought they were. Nikolai Lantsov was fairly recognizable, he thought.
At least the police didn’t arrest him. Probably Kaz.
- incidents six through ten: kaz brekker ft. all of the crows at some point or another
Wylan is more useful with more knowledge. There is always a need for a demolition man, and he is decent now but the more he learns the better. The powers of blackmail never cease to amaze. The Dean shouldn’t involve himself in shady business if he didn’t want it used against him.
(It’s about usefulness.)
-
Kaz had not woken up and decided to kill someone that day, but murder was definitely being considered.
Professor Tante Heleen had just attempted to kidnap Inej again, and now was in police custody. It would not be that difficult to kill her.
I’m sorry your honor, the knife slipped. Oh well.
(Inej will be more effective if she doesn’t need to keep an eye on Tante Heleen. It has nothing to do with love.)
-
They had tried to kill Jesper. Jesper was his investment to deal with, not theirs. They could keep their grubby paws off his crew.
(Why does everyone assume he loves Jesper?)
(He doesn’t. Really.)
-
He had been the one to ask Nina to startle the old man. And it would be far more beneficial to have her as a credible nurse than having her kicked out. Just a little blackmail and the record was all cleaned up.
(He doesn’t care about her. Not at all. Nope.)
-
Helvar had gotten him information on Nikolai Lantsov. He would repay the favor. After all, that Darkling person had been an annoying thing to account for in his plans. It would be much better to have him out of the picture. And Nina would be unhappy with him in jail- he’d rather not deal with her like that.
(No, he did not care whether Matthias went to prison. He was useful, that is all.)
- incidents eleven through fifteen: kaz brekker ft. a crisis
The man had implied his Crows were for sale. He simply could not let that slide. His Crows are under his protection, and threats to their safety are taken seriously.
He has invested quite a bit into creating his crew, it would be a bother to have to redo all his work because he wasn’t prepared for threats.
-
(Nobody threatens his Crows.)
-
Oh shit, he cares about his Crows.
-
Well that’s inconvenient.
-
Fuck.