Author's Note: This one is a direct sequel to Cam's Slide Show, at the request of a couple its reviewers. I also got a few of the ideas from them as well. This one is quite random as well, and I hope it's just as funny as the other. And I hope everyone gets the "river in Egypt" joke. I particularly liked that one, and if was lost on anyone I think I would stop writing comedy altogether. Well, maybe not, but you get the general idea.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything you recognize. And since everything here is canon, I own nothing (unusual, I must say). If only I owned Hunter...Alas, I'm not fortunate enough to. Oh well. I'll just keep twisting and using him to my advantage, regardless of ownership. Hope Disney doesn't mind!

Cam's Pop Quiz
by Froggie Lover

Cam Watanabe had just made his presentation on how to defeat Lothor for roughly the twentieth time since he'd first shown it earlier that day. He looked around the room happily, deeming the team ready to move on. This last showing had seemingly (finally, even) produced results. No one had fallen asleep, started playing with their shoes, or interrupted him. It had gone relatively well. Given, most of his friends were sitting numbly in their chairs, eyes glazed over while he drilled the facts into their minds again and again, but he decided that it meant they were paying attention. And if actually being paid attention to in Ninja Ops wasn't the highlight of his day, his next set of actions would be.

"Well, that does it for the slide show," Cam said happily, turning off the projector and pulling the white screen back up.

The other Rangers sat up in their chairs, expressions of unshielded delight replacing the blank stares. He could tell they were all on the verge of yelling joyous exclamations at their apparent "freedom." Cam smirked. Boy, were they in for a surprise.

"Now for the pop quiz," he continued, his smirk turning into a full-fledged grin.

The samurai got exactly the reaction he had expected and wanted. The joy on their faces faded into looks of surprise, shock, and even anger.

Hunter Bradley was the one with the latter emotion displayed clearly in his countenance. "What quiz? What are you talking about? You never mentioned any quiz."

Cam couldn't help the small laugh that escaped him. "That's why it's called a 'pop quiz,' Hunter. It's meant to be a surprise." With the expression on the Crimson Ranger's face, anyone else would've feared for their lives, but not Cam. He was practically unfazed by the blond's attempts to stare him down.

Slowly the others were coming out of their respective dazes.

"Well, at least the quiz is going to be on the slide show…right?" Shane Clarke asked.

The Green Ranger nodded as he hit the print button on the supercomputer.

"I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing," Blake Bradley.

"If you had paid attention all twenty times we went through it, then it might be a good thing," Tori Hanson quipped, smirking.

Dustin Brooks rolled his eyes. "Oh, yeah, right. As if you weren't distracted by the shiny spots on your morpher around Showing Number Ten."

The only female of the team grumbled something incoherent, but otherwise did nothing else to disagree with the statement.

While concentrating on the activity on the monitor, Cam brought out the remote and pressed one button (turning the lights back on), and then another which activated a mechanism that pulled the chairs back under the floor. Most of the Rangers had the sense to get up as soon as the chairs started moving, but Dustin remained in his seat, slightly unaware of what was happening. For a moment it looked like he was going to end up under the floorboards with the rest of the furniture, but Hunter and Shane managed to pull him out of the seat in the knick of time. The Yellow Ranger smiled sheepishly at his teammates, having only realized his error in judgment as he watched the chairs sink beneath the floor.

Cam pressed a button on the remote again, and their familiar table rose out of the floor much like the chairs had gone into it. He pulled some sheets of paper from the printer near the desk, and indicated for them to sit.

Slowly, the Rangers sat down, glancing between the papers in Cam's hand, each other, and Cam himself. This didn't look good.

"So, you're serious about the quiz?" Hunter asked. His residence was still a certain river in Egypt, apparently.

The samurai made no reply, or gave any indication that he'd even heard the question, but simply plopped a piece of paper down in front of Hunter. The darker Bradley brother stared at it in disbelief, and then looked around the table. He found that the others' faces weren't too different from his own.

Once Cam finished passing out the quizzes, he grabbed some pens from a drawer (they were easy enough to find, considering Cam didn't trust much to paper these days) and handed them to his teammates. He also pulled out an egg timer, set it, and then placed it next to the monitor. He sat down in his chair, watching with a smirk as the others nervously uncapped their pens and poised them over their papers. "Go," was all he said.

And with that, Cam was happy to see, the others set about the quiz. He turned around in his chair, going about some coding work that he had put off in order to do the presentation.

Before actually starting the quiz, the other Rangers looked at each other. None of them fully remembered the slide show, so they made a silent agreement. Nudging their papers out so everyone else could see their answers, they decided that they would answer what they could, and whatever they couldn't, they'd look to the others' in hopes that they would have remembered.

The questions extended to the bottom of the page, but after further inspection they found that they didn't go over onto the back of the page. With a few sighs of relief, they started.

Dustin got stuck on the first question. "What were the goals stated within the vision statement?" it asked. Even though he'd been awake and (for the most part) paying attention when he'd seen this part (all twenty times), he still didn't remember. With an almost audible gulp (for he knew that getting stuck on the first question of a quiz was never a good sign), he continued on, hoping that one of the others would remember.

Blake managed to get through the first few questions, mostly due to his awareness when he had first heard the subjects involved (like telling Cam to dream on when he stated the so-called "vision statement"). He totally skipped the middle and last portions, because he had fallen asleep during them all but once. There was only one at the end that he could answer, and after that he waited for the others to get to the section he'd missed.

Shane was doing fairly well, although he wasn't sure his answers were accurate. After the third presentation or so, he'd sort of zoned out. He had a skate demo that weekend and he was thinking of a way to totally nail a move that he'd been trying so hard to perfect for weeks, and he ended up almost completely ignoring the slide show. So, needless to say, the information from the first few times was getting pretty jumbled. He'd just have to see what the others said.

While the others were working, Hunter was pretty much staring blankly at his paper. He quite enjoyed living in a river in Egypt, so he didn't do anything with the quiz. Sure, he probably knew the answers because Cam had come to drilling the answers into him, and if there was anything Hunter learned while living at the Thunder Ninja Academy, it was to pay full attention whenever someone with the power to create virtual doubles of themselves was talking. But, as previously stated, he found the scenery in the Nile delta quite enchanting, so he stayed there.

Tori was probably the only one of the group faring well. She remembered most if not all of the answers and was making a point of letting Blake see them. But as she approached the bottom of the page, she stopped. She froze in her seat, and reread the sentence to make sure she wasn't going crazy.

She waved her hands wildly just above the guys' papers to get their attention, and then made a cutting motion across her throat.

They gave her genuinely confused looks.

She pointed to the top of the page, and then to the very bottom. With an exchanged glance they read what lie there.

At the top, it said, "Read all directions and questions before beginning the quiz." And at the bottom of the page, it read, "Skip all questions and put your name in the top right-hand corner of the page."

Blake, Shane, and Dustin blanched. Hunter, on the other hand (who had been awakened from his denial by Tori's zany hand motions), grinned devilishly. For once, acting like Dustin had paid off! He quickly put his name on the top of the paper, and then set his pen down, rather satisfied with himself.

Agonizing minutes went by for the other four before the egg timer went off. Cam stood up, stretched, and collected the papers. Already a confident grin lie on his features, mostly because he'd been watching the entire thing from the computer. His reasoning was, if he could see nearly everything going on in the outside world, why shouldn't he be able to see everything that happens in Ninja Ops as well?

"Tsk, tsk," he said, trying his best to sound surprised as he read through the quizzes. "You guys should've read the directions better."

The discouraged four exchanged nervous glances. Hunter, however, remained the arrogant, cocky Thunder Ninja he'd always been.

When Cam reached the bottom of the pile, he was genuinely surprised to see Hunter's paper. But then he noticed a tiny flaw. "Aw, Hunter, you were so close."

Hunter's confidence quickly disappeared at these words. "What? No, I did it right. I read all the directions and only did the last one. What are you talking about?"

At this, the Green Ranger let the blond have what was coming to him. "Denial is not just a river in Egypt, Hunter." He displayed the paper for everyone to see. "You were supposed to put your name in the right-hand corner of the page. Instead, yours is on the left." With that, he turned on his heel and headed towards a corridor off the main room.

The five Rangers left sitting at the table stared at each other in shock.

"Um, correct me if I'm wrong, but did we all just fail that quiz?" Tori asked.

With a good mix of reluctance and disbelief, Shane admitted, "Yeah, we did."

In the hallway that eventually led to the Zord Bay, Cam was practically skipping down the corridor, gleefully rereading the quizzes.

"How did they do?" Sensei called from his cart that was making its way towards the main room. There was a hint of amusement in his voice.

"They all failed," Cam answered, handing the papers to his father. He couldn't hide his grin or the delight he took in the situation.

Sensei shook his head as his son went skipping off to the Zord Bay. "Whatever makes him happy," he said to no one, and he began reading through the quizzes, wondering what kind of mistakes the other Rangers had to make in order to garner a "fail." The answer, oddly enough, didn't surprise him.

THE END


BTW, has anyone ever had that happen to them in school? The kind of quiz that Cam gave the other Rangers, that is. It happened to me -- twice. The first time I actually fell for it, but the second time I was wiser, and I think I was one of the few people in the class who got it right. Now that's an awesome feeling. I probably shouldn't revel in feeling slightly superior to others, but whatever...Anyway! Hope you liked it, 'cause I liked writing it!