Theme: Favorite

IOM JAGOJ

A series of oneshots

-o-oOo-o-

Title: Pyromaniacs

Genre: Humor, Friendship

Rating: T

Characters: Jack, Maddie, Vlad; College Trio

Summery: Never underestimate the capacity of which three science students can cause chaos.

Warnings: Swearing, fire.

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"Mr. Fenton, Mr. Masters! In here now!"

Vlad froze, turning to glance at his friend beside him. Jack winced, and Vlad inwardly groaned. In unison they turned around and walked into the administrators office, Vlad readjusting the books in his arms. The door slammed behind them, the two students trying not to flinch. They took the two seats set out before the desk.

Vlad leaned closer to his friend, "Jack-"

Hands slammed down on the desk and Vlad nearly bit his tongue shutting his mouth so fast. Before them, the administrator was red in the face, his eyes glaring at them with a vehemence that Vlad forced himself not to shy away from.

"You two should be expelled for this, you know! The amount of shit you two've caused this year has been past what would be tolerated from any normal student! If it wasn't the fact that you were working on a unique subject and actually getting results from it, you'd both be tasting the dirt road, scholarships and grades be damned!" the man bellowed. Jack shifted nervously, but Vlad stared in disbelief.

"What've I done?!" he squawked.

The administrator jabbed a finger towards Vlad, "Don't play dumb, Masters! You know very well why you're in here!"

Vlad shook his head, protesting, "No, I'm being serious, I haven't done—"

"Silence!" the man slammed his fist on the desk, and the two flinched, going silent, "You will both be spending the entire week cleaning up that building! You're lucky that I'm not calling the police for this, all of your incidents have surely added up to a criminal offense!"

"But I haven't-"

"Silence, Masters! Your punishment starts today! Five O'clock sharp, you had both best be in the science building!" he barked. The two quickly nodded their heads, for fear of the man blowing a gasket if they even tried to fight the sentence. He administrator huffed, then say down in his chair, "Now out!"

They didn't need telling twice.

Jack was up and bolting through the door, Vlad trailing behind due to being over cumbered by his books. They continued down the hall, turning into another, before they even tried to slow down form heir near jogging pace. Despite jack still keeping a fairly brisk speed, Vlad matched it in full, weaving about the other few students occupying the hall.

"Jack...Would you care to enlighten me on what I've supposedly done to deserve a weeks worth of what's basically detention?" he finally asked.

Jack looked at him, and blinked. Then he shrugged, "Well, you see, Mads and I-"

Vlad stopped, his bulky companion advancing a few steps ahead.

"Why didn't you SAY it was Maddie who was with you?!"

Jack turned around and waving his arms above his head, "Cuz she's got that big report and presentation this Thursday! She needs all the time she can get to get to done!"

"And I don't need all my time to get my thesis and calculations done?!" Vlad bit back. To be fair, his didn't require much work to get done. But still. Jack shrugged again.

"You work on them, I'll clean the science building up."

"What'd you do to the science building?!"

Jack scratched the back of his neck sheepishly, "Uhh...We, uh...kinda set it on fire?"

Vlad blinked.

"You set. The science building. On fire."

"Yeah." Jack nodded, "Room 107."

"Wait—YOU SET THE INSIDE ON FIRE?!"

Jack threw his arms into the air again, "It was Maddie's fault! She added too much reactant! It was supposed to simmer until all that was left were the purities, but she dumped an entire beakers worth into it! Thing went up like a fiery tornado and belched on the ceiling!"

Vlad pinched the bridge of his nose, "Oh my god."

"Although it was a little my fault cuz I forgot to remove the oxide from the mixture before giving it to her..."

"Oh my god."

Jack smiled wide, "Well, y'know what they say! Live and learn!"

Vlad gave him a pointed loot, "Or, in your case, set shit on fire until you learn or die wondering."

"Hey, it works." Jack shrugged and Vlad stepped back up to his friends side. They continued down the hall, Vlad perpetually shaking his head.

"In the odd, unknowable ways that only Jack Fenton Logic works." the sarcasm was lost on Jack, but the subject wasn't pushed. They began to swing back towards the dorms, exiting the school building, "C'mon, lets go see if we can find some cheap cleaning supplies from the dollar store during our last few hours of freedom today."

"Eh, it's only a few hours per day, we'll still have the evening in the suit." Jack countered.

Vlad gave him another look, "Yeah, for you. I have a night class at seven."

"Whoops."

Vlad rolled his eyes, shifting his books and trying to readjust the shoulder bag digging into his collarbone. Jack walked with his hands in his lab coat pockets, having had no need to bring any class suplies earlier. After a few minutes, he gave up watching Vlad try to deal with all of his things alone and took the textbooks right out of the shorter's hands. Vlad grumbled for a while, but eventually accepted it and wrapped his fingers around his shoulder bag's strap. Once at the dorm, Vlad tossed his stuff into his room, and the two set back out again.

"You think the school's gonna make us pay for the damages?" Jack asked, catching Vlad's wandering attention from the cars passing by on the street.

"Jack, they're making us clean it up, I wouldn't be surprised if they made us rebuild it too." Vlad snorted, brushing his hair back behind his ear despite the fact that wind just yanked it back out again, "But yes, we're probably going to have to pay for the damages." Jack was silent for a while before looking towards Vlad out of the corner of his eye.

"I don't supposed you could—"

"No. I'm not calling my mother to try to get her to smuggle some funds to me."

Jack shrugged, accepting the answer, "Was worth the ask."

"You do know that if my mother would ever try that she could be seriously hurt, right?" Vlad glared, his eyes narrowing.

"I know, but she's clever." Jack stated.

Vlad snorted, tightening his arms crossed in front of his chest, "Not clever enough to hide several thousand missing dollars from my father." he muttered.

Jack caught sight of the store they were headed to, and nodded towards it. He was thankful for the opportunity to change the subject, and Vlad was thankful his friend didn't push the touchy subject any further.

"What would you say we'd need to clean up burn marks?"

Vlad groaned, running his fingers through his hair, "Fuck, I don't know..."

"When you said you 'kinda' set room 107on fire, I thought you meant a little bit." Vlad stopped dead, gaping at the room, "Not this much!"

"It was a large scale experiment."

The entire front left corner of the room was scorched. Ceiling tiles were eaten away, revealing the innards of the world. Linoleum was painted with soot and debris, a burnt table pushed next to the door. Bright yellow string was tied from chairs and a anatomical display around the area, blocking it off. Vlad wandered closer, dropping the bucket in his hand onto a lab table. Jack sidestepped around him, setting the other supplies by the wall.

Vlad looked at him, incredulous, "To do what?!"

"We were trying to nail down the solution for the theoretical filter the Proto might need." Jack untied the string and moved the blockade away.

Vlad joined him, shifting the chairs away from the mess, "Maddie and I have just barely nailed down what might need filtering, why are you two trying to do that already?"

"To be prepared." Jack smiled, "It was her idea."

"Wonderful..." Vlad rolled his eyes, sneezing into his elbow from the kicked up soot. The air smelled like something foul was thrown into a campfire.

Jack began to mix the bleach with the water, carefully measuring it so as not to further damage the room. Vlad pulled over a table and started climbing on top of it, "Help me up."

Jack lent Vlad his shoulder, holding the other stead as he go to his feet on the desk. Vlad gestured for the supplies and jack relocated them to Vlad's desk, handing him a pair of gloves and a scrub sponge. Jack eyed him, "You're gonna fall and break your neck."

"Well at least you and Maddie would get compensation as my suitmates." Vlad joked, pulling on the gloves, "Get to work on the upper walls, we'll work from top to bottom to get the more difficult sections done faster."

"Got it!"

Vlad soaked his sponge in the solution then set to work scrubbing the ceiling tiles. The soot blackened the sponge before he was even done with one section. The solution ran down his gloves and he had to keep drying it off so it wouldn't fall onto his skin. The progress was slow and painful for the both of them, both needing to constantly reach up. Vlad back began to hurt from leaning backwards a bit. He paused after a while, wiping his forehead with his free hand. The clock above the door read only 5:43, and he exhaled loudly. He was going to be beat before he even packed up to go to his evening class, let alone sitting through it. Shaking his head and soaking his sponge, he went back to work.

"Hey losers!"

Vlad startled, and swung around. Jack looked to the door, beaming.

"Maddie!"

Maddie walked into the room, her hands on her hips. She raised a brow at them, "Figures Fenton roped you into helping him with this, Masters. You look like a nanny right now."

Vlad flushed, "Actually, I'm serving your punishment because they thought that I helped do this. Jack said nothing about you being there the entire time Dickwad chewed us out big time."

"Dicksen."

"Same thing."

Jack nodded towards her, "What are you doing here, Mads, I thought you have work to do for Thursday?"

Maddie shrugged, twirling her sunglasses in her fingers, "I was feeling guilty that Jack got punished and I didn't, so I swung by to lend a hand. But seeing as your both here by school order, I don't have to do a thing."

Vlad gave her a glare as he knelt down, "We could use your help if your just gonna sit there for two hours, you know." he wet his sponge and wrung it. She waved a hand towards him, and set her tote bag on a clear table.

"Nope, I'm gonna work on this." she chirped, taking out bottles, beakers, a strange blocky device, and thick packets of papers. She set the palm-sized machine on the table, curling it's wires around it.

Jack's face lit up as he saw everything, "The solution thesis!"

Vlad furrowed his brows, "Wait what?"

"I think I figured out what we need to do for the filtrator to work. It both overheats and fails to supply the engine with what it needs to form Untrihexium. So I was thinking we need a coolant that won't interfere with the pressurized reactants." Maddie explained, flipping through the papers. She bit the side of her sunglasses, a crease forming on her forehead as she skimmed over the tiny font.

"Water. It's the easiest thing to use." Jack suggested. He walked over to her side and looked over her shoulder.

Vlad shook his head, "Easy doesn't necessarily mean a good option. Water turns to steam, and the engine may actually split it back into hydrogen and oxygen. And personally, I don't want hydrogen anywhere near superheated polarity coils." he stated, "Helium wouldn't react to the heat if it got too hot, perhaps we could chill it?"

Maddie frowned, "I'm not too sure about that. Besides, pure helium would run us a huge tab—one none of us can afford."

Jack's eyes lit up, "Liquid nitrogen?"

Vlad rolled his eyes, "We don't want to freeze the entire engine." he retorted.

"No, hear me out. Instead of a coolant we add after the fact, why don't we just alter the framework for a chamber inside it? Surround the coils and the charger with the nitrogen, that way the rest of the machine wont be melted. The coils'll get pretty hot anyway, so the nitrogen won't stay at freezing temperature for long." Jack explained. His hands gestured excitedly around, vaguely illustrating what he was talking about.

"But if the rest of the machine gets too cold, it won't work. The parts will freeze together and the electrical currents'll go haywire." Maddie countered, resting her chin on her hand as she leaned over the table.

"So we need something cold but no too cold. And nonreactive."

"Argon, perhaps? Argon is the gold of the noble gases, it doesn't react with anything. The chamber idea may actually work, just not with nitrogen. We'd just have to figure out how to chill the argon, as the gas tends to not be stored at low temperatures." Vlad said. Maddie shook her head, a conflicted grimace spreading across her face.

"I don't know...I like that, but I don't think we could chill argon." she said after a bit.

"Okay, lets do a test." Jack spoke up again, "Let's try some water on the smallscale test build engine, I can alter it easy for the chamber, and see if it splits. If it does, we'll invest into argon. If it doesn't, we'll try it with the fullscale. Sound good?"

Vlad jammed his tongue into a crack between his teeth, humming. He stared at the leg of a desk as he thought, mentally weighing the options. Maddie kept biting on her glasses, the toe of her shoe bouncing on the titled floor.

Vlad nodded, "Alright, fine. Lets go with that. I still stand by my assumptions, however."

Jack chuckled, "V-man, you're too paranoid. I don't think the Proto is strong enough to rip atoms apart." he poked Vlad in the leg with a scrub brush.

Vlad snorted, "Oh, my mistake, it's just strong enough to slam them together."

"Settle your little butt down, Mr. Sarcasm." Maddie chided, looking at him pointedly. She grabbed a large beaker and scooted over to him, "Masters, you fill this with water and put it in the cooler."

Vlad frowned, pausing in his decent from the table, "Wait, why can't you do that?"

She waved her hand in the air as she walked back over to the table, "Because Jack and I need to set up the smallscale."

"Fine, I need a break from this bending and stretching anyway." Vlad hopped down, grabbing the beaker. Jack began to pry the dented, welded casing off the machine on the table.

"I'll try to get a chamber made up real quick, Mads, you set up the power source."

Vlad peeked by Jack's arm, "How's that makeshift chamber?"

The bulky man snorted, placing his hands on his hips, "Not pretty, we can't put the cover on, but it's functional."

Maddie perked at the exchange, turning and looking around Vlad at the machine. The framework was bare tot he world, wires and connections spilling out in all directions. A newly formed oblong ring was around the heart of the device, partially buried by gears and pistons. Tubing and bolts littered the table, thick cords extending from the tiny device to the wall sockets. Vlad bent, inspecting the connections and joints. Maddie nodded, and she walked tot he cooler, chestnut curls bouncing with her steps. She retrieved the glass beaker from the top shelf, breaking up the ice that formed inside with a screwdriver.

"Good enough. Let's test this!"

Vlad watched as the other two filled the cooling chamber with the ice water mixture. He eyed it, uncertain. All of the previous attempts to fix the overheating issue have failed. The smallscale never had an issue with overheating, but the largescale—the final product—did, so the smallscale had to be modified to do so. The duo finished and moved back, taking the remote control from the table. Vlad joined them, his arm crossed and his chin in his hand.

"Maddie, normally I only disagree with your genius when I have valid reason for why I don't think something'll work, but right now, I just have a really bad feeling this isn't going to work." he muttered.

Maddie turned and gave him a small smile, "It'll be fine, most of the beaker was ice when I got it out. That's plenty cold enough, and the waters separated from the coils anyway, even if it did split."

Vlad hummed, "I guess you're right..."

Jack pushed between them, a wide smile splitting his face, "Ready?!"

"As ready as I'll ever be." Vlad steeled his resolve and crossed his fingers behind his back—all ten of them.

"Flip it!" Maddie clapped her hands together, staring intently at the machine.

"Flipping it!"

The switches were pushed forward, and electricity rushed to the portal. The machines began to move, coming alive as they worked to perform their designed task. It began to buzz, and the sound got louder and louder until a soft hissing screech joined in. Vlad tensed, the uncomfortable feeling in his gut returning full force despite Maddie's reassurance. The machine wailed, but despite the cacophony of noises, it held fast. Minutes passed and all seemed well. Nothing was smoking or melting yet.

And then it was. Hot steam screamed as it poured out of a hole somewhere in the cooling chamber. The smell of burning metal wafted into the air. Metal popped as it distorted from the heat.

Jack blinked at the machine, "Uh oh."

"BAIL, HIT THE FLOOR!"Vlad yelled. His fingers fisted into the lab coats of his friends, pulling them as he lunched himself backwards onto the floor.

The machine exploded, bursting apart and spilling is white-hot intestines all across the room. The large ball of flame expanded into the room, dissipating as it ran out of fuel to consume. Smoke rolled over the trio, the hairs on the backs of their necks tingling from the heat above them. Vlad hissed, his elbow throbbing from being slammed against hard tile. Jack slowly uncovered his head, coughing in the hazy, sulfur-smelling air hanging around them.

"Vladdie, Mads, you okay?!"

Vlad slowly pushed himself up, coughing, "I told you both. I told you and you said it was good!" he snapped, looking back towards the smoldering table, "We just basically set of a bomb."

Maddie waved her hand in front of her face, "I'm fine, and so is Vlad if he's complaining"

Vlad flopped over to glare at her, "My complaints are valid! Do you two—"

Jack's hand twisted into the collar of his lab coat, "Fire!"

Maddie furrowed her brows, "What?"

"The room is on fire again!" Jack jabbed a finger towards the ceiling. The other two fallowed the gestured, eyes locking onto the licking flames slowly eating away at the ceiling. The far wall matched it, papers and drywall charring and crumbling. Vlad's jaw fell open.

"YOU SET THE ROOM ON FIRE AGAIN!"

Maddie slapped him, "WE SET THE ROOM ON FIRE AGAIN, YOU HELPED THIS TIME!" she scrambled to her feet, stumbling over both men's legs as she darted towards the door, "We need water!"

Vlad raced after her, trying to look through the building smoke, "Screw water, we need an extinguisher!"

"We used the extinguisher last time, it's not here anymore!" Jack called, grabbing the portal notes and tote bag from against the scarred table.

Maddie rushed in, heaving a bucket full of water after her. She threw it at the fires climbing up the wall, only partially dousing them. The flames crackled and hissed, and she swore. Vlad's eyes suddenly widened.

"Oh no, the—"

Loud alarm beeps blared to life, and Vlad had to shove his hands to his ears to muffle it. The sprinklers spritzed and began to spraying water all over the room. It did very little for the flames creeping across the ceiling.

"Fire alarm..." he finished lamely.

"Ignore it, just put it out!" Jack snapped.

Vlad threw his arms out, incredulous, "With what, my face?!"

Maddie grabbed him by the sleeve of his arm and yanked him out of the room. The cleaner air filled his lungs and he coughed for a moment, not realizing how much smoke he'd been breathing. Jack muffled his own coughs from somewhere beside him. A bucket was shoved into his chest and he winced, fumbling as he grabbed it. Loud footsteps sounded from down the hall, and he turned just in time to see the vary angry red face of the school administrator fallowed by several firefighters.

"YOU THREE GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE! TO MY OFFICE, NOW!" the man roared, jabbing a ringer down the hall.

The trio remained frozen for a few seconds. Snapping out of their daze, they threw their buckets to the ground and took off down the hall, running as fast as they all slid to a stop at a stairwell, Vlad leaning on the handrail as he tried to catch his breath. He looked between his friends, shakeing his head slowly as he registered what they'd just done in full.

"We are so dead." Maddie said through her panting breath.

Vlad snorted, "Gee, I wonder why."

Jack laughed, nudging Vlad in the ribs, "Oh come on, you enjoyed that."

"I did not!"

"Liar, that was awesome. And we learned what not to do for the Proto."

"...Okay, it was kinda rad, since it was kinda a bomb." Vlad admitted, leaning his head back against the wall. Jack's smile grew and he punched his smaller friend in the arm lightly. Vlad just grinned and shook his head disbelievingly.

Maddie chuckled, "Don't worry, I'll bail you two out, Mr. Dicksen listens to me."

"We're still gonna be skinned." Vlad pointed out, pushing off the wall and walking with the other two as the slowly climbed the stairs.

Jack smirked at him, "Yeah, but do you even feel bad about it?"

"Not a god damned bit."

"Would you want to do it again?"

"Absolutely."

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AN: The college trio is forever my favorite. Just gimme all of their misadventures. Also, I have no idea how the heck college works. I realize that this prolly isn't realistic at all, but fuck it, I wanted to write some college trio blowing stuff up and dammit I did it.