"You, uh, you want me for what?" Tavros Nitram cringed back slightly when Vriska Serket, his best enemy, threw her arm around his shoulders and pulled him firmly against her side. Her sapphire blue eyes shone in mischief, and a wide grin Tavros didn't really trust stretched across her lips.
"Join our AcaDec team!" She repeated loudly.
"What, uh, is AcaDec, exactly?" Tavros stammered slightly. Vriska sighed heavily in annoyance, shoving the boy away from her and grabbing his arm instead; she spun him around so that he was no longer walking and was instead facing her directly.
"It's a competition!" She announced with grandeur, using her other arm to emphasize her point. Her violent blue eyes were alit with passion and excitement, but also the little bit of craziness that kept Tavros in a semi-constant fear of her. "You get a topic, just one general time period, and you devote the entire year to learning every little thing you can about it. We learn about the artists, the musicians, the authors, everything. And then, during competition season, we compete against other AcaDec teams to prove which school is the better school!"
"Um, it just sounds like extra school work to me." Tavros made a face at the thought of more work piled on top of his school work. "Why would anyone want, uh, more school work?"
"The same reason people join any competitive team!" Vriska shook him slightly. "For friends! For glory! For the ability to defeat rival school and rub their faces in the dirt with your superiority!"
"But, uh, you have no proof that you'd even win anything." Tavros pointed out. Vriska took a deep breath, her hand tightening painfully on his arm, and he backpedaled quickly in case she decided to get more violent than just shaking him. He hated it when she gave him bruises; they always lasted for weeks and they were impossible to explain to Rufio. "I wasn't aware that we even had a team for, um, something like that."
"It's a fairly new team." She said through clenched teeth. Her body was tensed, and Tavros was hoping that talking about her team would prevent her from doing him any bodily harm. "It just started about two years ago." Vriska sniffed slightly in disdain, but it seemed to work; she relaxed and shook his arm again, pleadingly this time. "We really need a few new members. C'mon, Tavvie, it'll be fun!" Tavros winced at the nickname, but he knew how this was going to end. He sighed heavily, his shoulders dropping in defeat.
"Fine." He sighed. Vriska squealed and released his arm, punching it squarely before she turned and bolted. Tavros winced again and rubbed his arm where she hit him. He watched her as she left, wondering how much he'd regret letting her talk him into something like this.
The next morning, Tavros stood with another boy, Sollux Captor, in front of eleven others in a classroom. Tavros yawned, hiding behind his oversized black sweatshirt; he had woken up late, not used to having to be at school at 7:05 in the morning, and didn't have time to properly dress. Half of what he wore was his older brother Rufio's, which meant it was too big for Tavros and hung off his body. While the too-big sweatshirt was fine, his pants were also too big. His hand was wrapped firmly around his belt loop, holding the loose jeans up on his slim frame.
"So," Karkat crossed his arms, sniffing disdainfully. He was leaning on the desk, watching the two of them critically. "You morons are the two new fuckasses joining our stupid ass AcaDec team?" Karkat Vantas was the shortest kid in their grade, just barely hitting five feet, but sometimes Tavros forgot that due to the sheer volume of his voice. The boy had no concept of an inside voice, which meant his words were we other shouted or screamed out, depending on how pissed off he was. At the moment though, he looked almost as tired as Tavros felt, slowly getting to his feet and yawning widely behind a packet of paper. "Do you morons know anything about AcaDec?"
"You didn't tell me anything, just to be here at 7." Sollux crossed and then uncrossed his arms, squirming uncomfortably by Tavros. Captor seemed twitchy, his fingers working by his sides in random and rolling patterns. "Unless this kid got more outta VK than I did outta you, we're shit outta luck." Karkat glowered at him and then at the ceiling, as if he was praying for patience.
Then he started pacing the floor in front of Tavros and Sollux, staring at them both critically. Tavros squirmed uncomfortably in his clothes, not used to the amount of scrutiny Karkat was watching him with. Vriska didn't even glare at him so potently, and she hated him half the time!
Sollux didn't seem to mind; his fingers twitched every now and then, brushing up against Tavros's as they did so. He seemed tired as well, but for a different reason: everyone who knew Sollux knew that he liked to stay up with no sleep when he started working on some computer project. Tavros wondered how long the other boy had been up for and what was so important Sollux would abandon something as wonderful as sleep.
"We recruited you two fuckasses to be in our Varsity section of our team." He informed them loudly.
"Varsity?" Tavros perked up a bit at that, trying to force the drowsiness out of his voice. He rubbed his eye, trying to focus. "That's, uh, good, right?"
"Yes, it is." Karkat responded, making Tavros wince because Vantas had gotten right in his face to say it. His drowsiness chased away to Karkat's immense satisfaction, the Vantas nodded once and crossed his arms. "It is, because we already have everything else filled up." He marched over to the white board and pulled open a black marker.
"Do we really need a diagram?" Sollux whined, looking behind him longingly at the desk where Feferi and Eridan were seated. "Can't we sit down first?"
"Shut the fuck up, Captor." Karkat snapped without turning around. He stood up on his toes and wrote 'Honors', 'Scholastic', and 'Varsity' as high as he could on one board. On another, he wrote the words 'Academic Decathlon'. Underlining each of those, Karkat turned around and shot them a quick glare to be sure they were paying attention. "This is how Academic Decathlon works, so pay attention!"
Academic Decathlon was just that: a decathlon. They had ten subjects to compete in, including a speech, an essay, and an interview along with their other subjects. Every year they were given a general topic to cover all of the usual school subjects. Last year's topic was Ancient China; this year's was the Great Depression. Karkat wrote each subject on the board: Art, Economics, Essay, Interview, Language and Literature, Mathematics, Music, Speech, Science, and Social Science. Each test was about fifty questions, except mathematics which was thirty-five, and would take a half hour each. Karkat added two lines to 'Speech', writing 'Impromptu' on one and 'Prepared' to the other. A line was added to Science with the words 'Super Quiz/Public Humiliation'. He also drew a line towards Language and Literature and wrote out a book- - -The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinback. They all had to purchase the book, as they were going to be using it for the majority of the year; Karkat demanded that they give him at least twenty dollars so that he could go buy the book if they were too lazy to go to the damn bookstore themselves. Interviews were something they would help each other with, as that was something that would vary from person to person, and for the three-and-a-half to four minute speech they had to write their own speeches.
"What, um, what kind of speech?" Tavros asked, his voice squeaking at the end when Karkat glared at him for interrupting.
"Any kind of speech you want!" Vriska answered from the back. Karkat spluttered in fury when Sollux and Tavros turned around, but they ignored him when she kept talking. "As long as it's an original speech that no one else has used, it can be about anything you want. You can make it funny, informative- - -last year, someone did a speech about bacon!" The whole class laughed, something that was cut down when Sollux pointed at the board.
"What is an impromptu speech?" He asked, his brows furrowed over his red and blue glasses.
"Impromptus are the worst!" Eridan whined, draping himself over Feferi dramatically; Tavros would have laughed if it wasn't for the fact that everyone around him shuddered in mock horror as well. "You go to the room and they'll give ya a choice of three topics. Ya gotta choose one, and then you have about a minute or so to pull a minute-and-a-half to two minute speech out of your ass."
"What?" Tavros squeaked at the same time Sollux rolled his eyes and muttered "Are you fucking kidding me?"
"No, we're not." Karkat thundered back, bringing attention back to him. "We'll help with those too, all right, keep your damn pants on." He glowered at the rest of the team behind Sollux and Tavros. "Now, if you morons are done interrupting, I'd like to fucking finish."
Super Quiz usually varied between Science and Social Science. Since it alternated between the two from year to year, this year was Science. They had a written portion of the test, which was forty questions that were completed with the rest of the subject tests. The last ten questions was where the Public Humiliation came in.
"What, exactly, is 'Public Humiliation'?" Sollux interrupted this time, though Karkat seemed almost please at the thought of explaining.
"We all get piled into the auditorium of wherever we are, and each section of the team," here he pointed at the other whiteboard, "goes one by one. They ask a question, you've got around seven seconds to bubble in your answer, and then they tell you the answer."
"And, uh, how is that Public Humiliation?" Tavros stammered out. Karkat grinned with his teeth and Tavros shrank back into his sweatshirt.
"If you get your answer right, you wave your pencil in the air. Like so." Karkat capped his marker quickly and twirled it in a graceful circle. "So everyone knows what answers you get right and what answers you get wrong."
"That doesn't seem so bad." Sollux scoffed, crossing his arms and smirking. "I think you guys are being a bunch of fucking pussies if that's all it takes to get under your skin."
"Sollux!" Tavros squeaked in horror.
"It's ok, Tavros." A voice rang out. Tavros peeked to his side and met the baby blue eyes of one of the guys on the team: John Egbert. John smiled at him kindly before looking at Sollux. "It's not so bad when it's just us and we're practicing." John admitted from his spot by Dave. The coolkid shrugged one shoulder when everyone looked at him and John, but Egbert kept talking. He was looking a little bit faint, though it probably had more to do with what he was saying and less from the absolute murderous glare Karkat was sending him from the front of the room. "But with all the other competing teams looking and watching you, as well as laughing whenever you get a question wrong..."
"Not to mention," Dave cut in coolly, just when Tavros started paling as well at the thought of what John said, "the Super Quiz Relay is the only part of the test that's open to the public."
"Hence, Public Humiliation." Karkat finished triumphantly. Tavros shook lightly; Sollux tensed up, his fingers turning white where he gripped his arms. "Not to mention, the two in each category who get the most answers right are the two whose tests go towards the collective score of the team."
"How do we know who's in what category of the team?" Sollux asked, motioning to the nearly empty whiteboard.
"That's due to our GPA." Karkat switched boards, sliding the 'Academic Decathlon' one over to the left and dragging the other one closer. "Honors is a GPA of 3.75-4.0. Our Honors section consists of Ampora, Egbert, and Gamzee." The three names went went alphabetically by last name under the 'Honors' category, while the GPA was written at the top by the word. Karkat moved slightly to his left, continuing onto 'Scholastic'. "GPAs of 3.0-3.74 is Scholastic; that's Vriska, Strider, and Equius." Karkat turned when he got to Varsity, making sure that Sollux and Tavros understood where they stood in the team hierarchy. "We'll make up the Varsity team. That's the GPA of 0-2.99." He wrote their names down, starting with Sollux's and ending with his own, and turned to face them again. His explanation was met with quiet applause from the rest of the team, but stunned silence from the two he was explaining to.
"Wait, I was recruited for what?" Sollux raged at his best friend, his fists clenched and his face twisting in a snarl. Karkat threw his marker at Sollux, hitting the other boy in the chest as he yelled at him. Tavros winced as the volume escalated in his ear, but shot his own weak glare at Vriska. He couldn't believe it; yes, his grades weren't the best but he didn't need a team that would rub it in his face. The girl beamed at him and waggled her fingers in response, leaning back in her seat and letting her hair splay out all over Eridan's desk behind her. The Honors student spluttered angrily, much to the amusement of Feferi and Sollux; she giggled, hiding her face behind her hand and he snorted, breaking his glare at Karkat.
"We needed you two nook sniffers because your grades literally suck ass even though you're supposedly intelligent as fuck." Karkat snapped back, crossing his arms as glaring at Sollux and Tavros. Tavros winced again; it seemed that Karkat was holding back during his explanation, but now that he was done, his language was back in full force. When Sollux didn't return his attention to his best friend, Karkat reached out and whacked him soundly on his side; Sollux winced and turned on him. "We need more Varsity students. I can't be in a team all by myself."
"I bet you could be if you tried." Sollux teased, already over his indignity at being placed in Varsity. "And besides, I'm not 'supposedly intelligent', I'm totally way smarter than you." Karkat shouted something unintelligible back at him, but Tavros wasn't paying attention; his eyebrows furrowed, the Nitram was looking at the subjects they had to study.
"This is, um, almost like another curriculum." Tavros pointed out. It interrupted Sollux's and Karkat's banter, drawing attention to him again. Tavros flushed but kept talking. "How, uh, when are we supposed to study all of this?"
"Competition season doesn't start until around February or so." Karkat continued his explanation. "Which means we have until then to learn all this material." He switched whiteboards again, pulling a blank one towards him and re-writing all the topics out. Adding lines to all of them this time, Karkat began writing down dates. "We get packets for these; we'll study them one at a time, for a week. We'll read a section of a packet every night and take quizzes every day for each part that we read. The one we need to study the most is Super Quiz, so we'll start with Science first." He glared over his shoulder to find any objections; finding none, he continued. "Essay we'll have to spend another week tackling; we'll use essay prompts from the USAD website to help with that."
"And speeches?" Sollux asked casually.
"Speeches you fuckasses need to be working on starting now." Karkat whirled around and pointed at Vriska, Gamzee, Eridan, John, and Dave. "You lot of losers were either on the team or in the class with me last year. All of you should have at least one speech done." He glared at them until they all admitted that they did, in fact, have a speech done; Gamzee was the only one who admitted having one right away with a careless wave and honking laugh that made Tavros jump about five feet in the air.
"And, uh, i-impromptus?" Tavros asked quietly. Karkat turned his dark eyes to him, but Tavros was staring at the floor. He scuffed the toe of his sneaker against the floor, his brow furrowed as he debated the merits of joining the team.
"Impromptus we work on in class." Karkat said slowly, glaring suspiciously at Tavros. "We'll work on them once a day, after we discuss the packets."
"I'm in." Sollux decided loudly. Tavros jumped and watched out of the corner of his eye as the taller boy turned on his heel. He high-fived Gamzee as he passed him, flipped Vriska off with his other hand, and collapsed on the seat beside Feferi. The girl smiled proudly and ruffled his hair, Eridan glaring at the both of them out of the corner of his eye. Karkat clapped once, the sound echoing in the room.
"Good on ya, asshole!" He yelled. Tavros managed a small smile, one that was wiped away when Karkat turned to face him with a set glare. "And you?"
"W-Well, I..." Tavros stammered, eyes wide as everyone turned to look at him. Sollux began shouting encouragement, followed shortly by Feferi and Vriska. Karkat threw an eraser, then another marker when they wouldn't shut up; despite the oncoming projectiles they kept their words of encouragement up. It was probably because Karkat had absolutely horrible aim and both eraser and marker flew harmlessly over everyone's heads. Tavros felt his hands clench, turning his head sharply to the side when he felt a gentle touch on the top of his hand.
Gamzee smiled lazily up at him, his fingers tapping lightly on Tavros' hand.
"Hey, motherfucker." He said quietly. "We could really do to have you on our motherfucking team, y'know?"
"Seriously, Tavros." Karkat said gruffly, crossing his arms. "We don't have time to find another person. We're behind schedule as it is because we couldn't get recruits at the end of last year like we hoped. We need you." He squirmed uncomfortably when he said it; Tavros sent him a small smile to settle him. Vantas hated admitting he needed help, even when he was asking for the sake of his team and not himself.
"C'mon, motherfucker." Gamzee dragged Tavros's eyes back down to him when he spoke. Tavros flushed darkly, but Gamzee ignored it and swung their hands slightly. "It'll be all kinds of bitchtits awesome."
"I...all right." He conceded, glancing pitifully at Vriska when she let out a loud whoop. He moved to sit next to her, but Gamzee tightened his grip on his hand and pulled him into the seat next to him. Too afraid to pull away from the Makara, Tavros allowed himself to be manhandled.
The loud slap of papers hitting the wood of the desk made him jump; Tavros looked down as Karkat strode down the desks to dump another huge packet on Sollux's desk. In unison, both boys groan at the size.
"What the fuck is this?" Sollux demanded.
"This is what we're learning this week." Karkat snapped. "Super Quiz is at the top. Start reading, fuckasses."