Hello once again, people! This is TranslatorPS, woohay! Welcome to my second fanfiction to be posted here!
LANG. NOTES: This story makes an attempt at introducing some Japanese in somewhere. For now, I'll stick to the chapter title, sure, why not. I will make it one hell of a point to get everything right :D
Like my already started story, this is also in present tense first person.
STORY / CHAP. INTRO: This story is a crossover, as you may have already noticed, between two light-novel/anime/manga series: Baka to Tesuto to Shoukanjuu and Kämpfer. When I stumbled upon B. . at first, I couldn't really place my character in there, but somehow I managed that, which results in this story below.
So far, this story only sees me as an OC... yes, I put myself in there.
This story will follow the events of the anime rather closely. The manga will hardly be taken into account (once again, the issue is the incompleteness of the scanlations, although there is enough stuff for me to work with available already). This chapter is an introduction outside of the anime and then moves into E01.
This story will also provide background for certain events and snippets from chapter 4 onwards in my other story, Kämpfer: A Polishman in Tokyo. And, like that story, this is also put forward in future to fit my own timeline.
FORMAT NOTES: Keeping with the style from Kämpfer: A Polishman in Tokyo, italics indicate my own thoughts, single quotation marks indicate speeches and bold indicates spoken pressure on the given word.
Original word count - 4,591. Word count w/ notes - 5,177.
DISCLAIMER: My rights only encompass this story and my extra events to it, as well as the OCs that may end up being here. Which roughly means that nope, I don't own the light novels, the manga or the anime "Baka to Tesuto to Shoukanjuu". Credit for translation of many of the anime lines goes to FUNimation. Real placenames used.
Ch. 1 – Ireland, Japan and an Exchange Student
第１話 – 「アイルランドと日本と交換学生」
だいいちわ – 「アイルランドとにほんとこうかんがくせい」
Question 1:
In which joining to the European Economic Community, now known as the European Union, did Ireland join the above mentioned EEC? Half the marks awarded for the year only.
March 10th, 2015 - 1.22pm - Galway, Ireland
'We've been recently thinking about making a student exchange programme with a certain high school,' the principal says.
'And, if I may ask, where is the school?' I ask.
Roughly two thirds of the school year are gone behind me. I am currently a fourth year student at St. Enda's College in Galway. To be precise, I'm sitting in the principal's office, opposite her at her desk.
The principal hands me a leaflet, covered in kanji and hiragana. Right glad I am there's no kataka... wait, what?!
'Japan?' I raise my eyebrows.
'We've talked with a variety of schools about an exchange student programme. This one has decided to have such with us. We'll provide one student and they'll provide one student. It's been decided that we'll keep the programme up for one Japanese school year, that is, from April 1st until March 11th next year. After that, the students will return home,' the principal explains as I read down the leaflet. Most of the kanji in there I undestand. However, a certain set jumps out straight at me that I somehow recognize but just can't remember the meaning of. I pull out a copy from the inside of my jacket and look the three kanji up.
'Has this school given you an English version of this leaflet?' I ask as soon as the three kanji make sense to me.
'They've explained things to us in word, so no, why?'
I put down the leaflet on the table and point to the sentence in question. 'This reads more or less as "As a measure of our students' academic abilities, we have a system of "Summoned Beasts" in place. These avatars can be summoned by each student and used to fight others. This is to encourage further studies in the case of each and every student."'
'Ah, yes. Our school is interested in this system, while we're at it and have the opportunity,' she replies. 'It's state of art. I can even go as far as saying that it denies the laws of physics.'
'I'm still not convinced.'
'It has also been agreed with the State Examination Commision that you'll receive a straight 100 on your Japanese Leaving Cert paper if you agree to this. To go to Japan, one needs to know the language very well and, to be honest, you're the only person in this school who can speak Japanese. Especially at such a level,' the principal points out, while showing me a marked and graded Japanese LC paper with a clear 100 on it and with what seems to be my examination number on it.
'Thank you for the compliment, when's the flight leaving?' I reply eagerly.
And this is more or less how I ended up in Japan for the first time.
My name is Piotr Sekuła. At this time, I am 16 years old. Born and bred in Poland, I've lived my past six years in Ireland and attented school there. I'm one of the top scorers when it comes to exams. But, how this scene is bound to tell, this hasn't turned out too well for me in this one single case.
Fumizuki Academy is special in its own way. First of all, it has the probably most interesting and most technologically advanced system any school has implemented – the so-called "Summoner Test War" system. Based on the last score of the person in a given subject's exam, they can summon avatars which take the fighting power of that score. In other words, the students put their efforts into an exam and then they fight other students. However, a teacher must approve the battle. On top of everything, it breaks the laws of physics. I don't think that Einstein has paid a visit to them.
Second of all, they're the most evil people ever. Based on the placement exam, the students are assigned to classes A thru F, with the equipment getting better and better as one approaches A. I've just described it this way because I don't want to have any bad feelings flowing through me.
Now, instead of me blabbering randomly, perhaps let's move on? And let's skip half a month on the way also. Sure, why not?
March 23rd, 2015 - 9.22am - Tokyo, Japan
'Alright, you may begin the test!' the supervising teacher calls out.
As soon as I flip over one of the pages, my heart is debating whether to stop or continue working. The page is filled with kanji and hiragana, and my speed of reading those isn't exactly at its best, as my native script is the Latin alphabet. Even with the Cyrillic alphabet I tend to have a small stall every so often. However, without further whining, I decide to keep to my oul' good methods and read down the questions first, catch the possibe out and only then start answering.
About three minutes into the exam, I finish plucking out the alpha and the omega of the questions and start plotting down my first answers. If anything goes wrong, well, damn it, I'm not going to cry over it. This doesn't count as much as the Leaving Cert in just over a year's time.
Another minute, I hear some sort of a noise at the back of the classroom. I decide to concentrate on the test and ignore it. Even when I hear somebody going spasmic about one getting zero if they leave the test centre.
Not your problem, now, go ahead and ignore the question about the history of Japan.
April 6th, 2015 - 8.23am - Tokyo, Japan
I generally wish to curse whoever decided that school will start at half eight. That half an hour makes a difference if you've been attending school this way for almost seven years straight.
As I make my way to the principal's office, I decide to let my thoughts go over the uniform. Grey trousers and something resembling a jacket of sorts. I don't want to further examine the thoughts of the person behind this. I was perfectly happy with the navy jumper back in Ireland – at least the grey trousers are still here. Oh, and that tie. Blue. Hm...
As I stand before the principal's office door, I knock on it six times – my somewhat trademark knock.
'Enter!' calls out a voice.
So I do enter. As soon as I step into the office, I take in as much as I can of it. Bookshelves on the right, a vast window at the back, and a desk right in front of it. No chair for me it seems, though.
'Oh. Welcome,' the principal welcomes me.
'Good morning,' I reply.
'I'm aware that you're an exchange student, but you will have to adhere to this school's rules nevertheless,' the principal starts. I don't care that much, I can do that. 'Which means that you'll be assigned class like everybody else,' Fine by me. 'Now, I had my own specific looks over your scores. I was rather happy with the English and Mathematics questions, and maybe the Physics and World History, however, it seems that your Japanese mustn't be as strong because the rest was a moderate failure.'
'I like honest people, principal,' I reply. With no emotions in my speech at all.
'Which concluded in you getting into Class F,' she strikes at me. 'Your avatar is ready, also.'
Class F? That was to be expected. I think as I look at my right wrist and the red bracelet on it. I wonder... no, there is no way that they'd know about this.
'Well, thank you, then. No matter what class I end up with, I'll still do the best there is to offer from me,' I reply warmly enough.
'Then I would kindly ask you to go to your class,' she says, with a little hint of surprise in her voice.
A minute or two later, I'm walking down the corridor, heading towards my new class. 2-F, I wonder what that is like. Soon enough, trying to keep my thoughts to a low limit, I reach my destination.
And I genuinely wish that I wasn't fooled by the easy 100 for my Leaving Cert papers. At least at this stage I only have to battle for the other 500, and I think that I've another easy 100 in my Polish paper anyway.
Vaguely speaking, the classroom doesn't resemble a classroom. Instead of anything humane to sit on like a chair, there is just a bunch of pillows or cushions or call them whatever you want to scattered around the floor behind low Japanese tea tables. At least there is an element of comfort in those pillows, if I find a good one, of course. As for the tables, well, I could probably make a better one myself in the Woodwork classes back in Ireland. If I had time, 'course.
The blackboard (yeah, it seems that they haven't really heard of whiteboards) is slanted to one side. And on top of that, unless the teacher is hiding it somewhere else, I don't see any chalk to go along with that.
The lights in the ceiling were bare bulbs. Not even energy-saving ones, and judging from their relatively poor shine, they're the cheapest 25 watts you can get on the market. The wooden window frames didn't seem to approve of the idea of being sealed and there were even pieces of glass missing.
'You can sit anywhere you want,' the teacher calls out to me, who is standing in the doorway, in a quite the monotone voice. I look up to him, then I look at the classroom once again, and just shrug my shoulders. What else can I do, for crying out loud?!
I find myself one of the last few remaining seats towards the back of the classroom, in the second last row, more to the right of the class than to the left. As I come to my seat, I look at the human composi... err, what a way to describe it, the student body of the class. It seems that my class is mostly male – and here I thought that I'd never end up in a class with such a male-to-female ratio.
As soon as I sit down, the four-tone Big-Ben-like bell rings. Oh well, I was always good with timing.
Four or five minutes into the class, the front door opens. Another male student, by the looks of it, is standing in the door, and probably having the same thoughts as I did just a while ago.
'No fair! This is violating my soul rights!' he calls out while clenching his wrist. What rights?
'Well, at least you're not alone, go ahead and sit down,' the teacher just continues with the monotone voice.
'Fine,' the guy seems to have just been demotivated. 'Where would you like me to sit, sensei?'
'I don't care, wherever you want.'
'There's no assigned seating?' the guy looks up once again.
Look, welcome to my own personal hell back in Ireland. If this strikes you, you should have been the one to go and be exchanged with me...
The guy just plops back to one of the two free seats at the back and plops his bag down on the table. As soon as he sits down on the pillow-cushion-whateveryouwannacallit, some sort of a further undescribed sound goes out of it.
'Err, excuse me, my cushion thing... it seems to have run out of all of its cushion,' the guy just plops out of the blue.
That's new...
'Please put up with it,' the teacher must love his monotone voice.
That's also new...
'Excuse me... there's a draft, it's cold in here,' and it's him again.
'Please put up with it.'
That's not new anymore.
'Excuse me...? One of the legs on my short table broke,' and thrice!
'Please put up with it.'
You're getting boring, teacher...
'Not possible!' the guy just stands up.
The teacher just laughs and says, 'I was just kidding,' as he puts a small bottle of wood glue on his desk.
'OK... so, yeah, I'm your homeroom teacher, Mr. Fuguhara, I look forward to teaching you and all that stuff,' the teacher says in his probably trademark by now monotone voice just as his desk breaks into smaller pieces right in front of him. I guess that's what purely dry wood tends to do. 'I'll be right back with some tools, you guys just study or... whatever,' the teacher says as he heads off out of the classroom.
The guy who had made a triple complaint just comes and picks the glue up and starts whining to himself, 'Man, this classroom is ridiculous. How am I supposed to spend a year in here? Talk about depressing...' Then, he makes an attempt at attaching the leg to the table. My woodwork instinct is telling me that the leg is gonna fall off nevertheless.
'Don't complain, you're the one who should have done better on the test,' another voice calls out from the back of the classroom.
'Yuuji? I didn't know you were in here,' the broken-table guy says.
'It's not just me,' the guy, whose name is apparently Yuuji, replies.
At this, I hear a giggle coming from a girl, which is going to probably turn out to be one of the very few salvations from this class. 'Hey, what's up? I'm in class F too!'
'Shimada! Of course, it only makes sense that you'd be in this class.'
Considering a Japanese name and such a remark towards a girl... what is she...?
'Urgh! Are you trying to call me an idiot?!' the girl, whose name I assume is Shimada, is at this stage holding the table guy's head in a painful headlock. The guy is trying to say something, but it's muffled, so I don't make it out. Five seconds later, he's knocked out.
'I grew up in Germany! It's not my fault I can't read that stupid kanji!'
I just feel like standing up and coming there, so sure enough I do. And then I just walk closer to the forming group. I notice another guy laying on the ground, probably trying to take a peek below the girl's skirt.
'I think I know why I have learned German,' I call out, in German, just for the crack. 'It's a quite the simple language, when you think about it... And kanji sometimes gets onto me as well.'
It seems that I have just caught her attention. She tries to speak back, but is interrupted by Japanese again.
'You all are lively as usual,' a somewhat girly voice calls out. I turn around, however, to the sight of a male uniform encompassing a feminine-looking person.
'Hideyoshi?' the table guy seems to have awakened from his knock-out.
'Correct, glad to see you. Welcome to class F.' I think I'm going to stick with the opinion of that person, Hideyoshi or whatever, being a guy.
'It's good to see you too. Well, I guess it's just what you'd expect from Class F... it's just a bunch of scruffy-looking dudes everywhere,' the guy just keeps on whining. I turn around the classroom to see a bunch of guys sitting in a corner with clothes on seemingly similar to Ku Klux Klan, never mention that name. Except they wear navy over-alls.
'Doesn't that include you too?' Yuuji seems to have picked up the teacher's voice.
'That's true, but if we can only have one girl, I'm glad it's you, Hideyoshi.'
I raise my eyebrows. 'What's he on about?' I mutter.
'Thanks, but I'm a guy,' Hideyoshi replies. Ah well, thank you for confirming things.
'I'm the girl, you jerk,' Shimada forces herself in. I was wondering alright.
'You just don't get it. Girls are kind and graceful and have this kind of spirit inside them that makes everyone feel good about themselves. Someone like you who's violent and scary and doesn't even have any boobs and breaks my spine-PLEASE STOP! LET ME OUT!'
'I'm afraid that chest size isn't an indicator of feminity, err, what's your name?' I call out.
'Yoshii... Akihisa...' the guy barely says his name in the headlock that he'd been just placed in.
'Danke!' Shimada replies in German. I guess that she wants to know a little bit more. And then I hear the door opening once again.
'Hello? I'm sorry I'm late,' a rather feminine at this stage, to a certain extent even slightly annoying, voice calls out. Yoshii and the guy who'd been trying to peek up a skirt for the past minute or so look up. 'I was at the nurse's office and took longer than I thought it would,' she explains herself. At this stage I turn around and genuinely regret. The pink hair just throws me off.
'One paper bag please, within the next 12 hours if possible,' I mutter out in English. The class, however, starts chattering about the new arrival.
'It's Himeji!' Yoshii calls out. The girl looks around and notices Yoshii, still laying under Shimada, and calls out, 'Eh? Yoshii!' She walks up to the guy and asks him, 'How are you?'
'I'm good, thanks for asking,' and the leg of the table breaks off. I just sigh, pick the glue up and look at the leg. Upon reading the glue's label on the bottle (eh, pain in the side), I just throw it into the bin.
'That looks kind of painful,' the girl, apparently called Himeji, notes. Shimada, like if on a mark, just tightens the grip and proceeds to break the bones in Yoshii's spine.
'NO-MY SPINE ISN'T SUPPOSED TO BE BENT THAT WAY! STOP, NO, AUUUU...' Yoshii screams out, whereas the guy who's spent the last few minutes trying to have a peek-a-boo under the skirt finally manages to succeed with the help of the wind. And he gets a major nosebleed, just as Yoshii's spine seems to be broken.
'Call a doctor!' Yoshii calls out as he gets up... wait a second, wasn't his spine just broken a second ago? 'Don't speak, are you okay Kouta? Say something!' I guess that I've just learned another name in my class. The Kouta guy seems to bleed to death while Yoshii screams out 'Stay with me!'. I just stand there and look at my watch.
Behind me, I hear Shimada, 'I can't believe that I'm not the only girl here. Seats aren't assigned or anything so we can sit wherever we want to sit,' as Yoshii is trying to bring Kouta back to the world of the alive.
'Cool. Thanks for telling me,' Himaji replies. Meanwhile, I sit beside Yuuji who is resting his arms against one of the tables.
'So, is this the class that I'm gonna be in now...?' I put forward a rhetorical question.
'Looks like it...' the question's supposed to be rhetorical! 'Hey, what language did you speak there to Shimada?'
'German, my fifth best language,' I reply.
The guy looks at me, 'Fifth?'
'Don't you know? I'm the exchange student. Name's Piotr Sekuła, I'm from Poland but moved to Ireland a good few years ago. The reason why I ended up in class F is because apparently my Japanese isn't too strong...' I reply.
'It's good, actually.' I smile. 'But, still, fifth?'
'I like languages a certain bit. My native language is Polish, and, by the way, I have respect for anybody who learns that language while it isn't their native language. Then English, which I obviously had to learn, Spanish, Japanese, German and, as much as I don't like to count it, Irish.'
'So, how did you get chosen for the programme?'
'I'm apparently the only speaker of Japanese in my school back in Ireland,' I reply.
Our conversation is somewhat interrupted by Himeji asking, 'So... is that seat over there free?' She is pointing to the table to the left of me. Yoshii turns around all of a sudden and replies, 'All yours.' I can sense the guy having something for Himeji. I'm not sure, is that the guy talking about something related to scoring zero in the placement test?
However, I just return to my desk. Once sitting, I look at my watch on my left wrist and just sigh. Well, you'll get through this. It's only one year.
Oh, self note. Keep the power of the Bracelet to yourself for now.
About four hours later
It's lunch time by now. With nothing better to do, I go to the very back of the classoom, sit myself against the failure of a locker shelf there and pull out a laptop from the bag that I brought there with me. I fire it up and after a few minutes, it kicks in. My first action is checking out the WiFi networks around, but as I'd expect, everything's password protected and very weak on top of that. Guess there is a major disadvantage to being that far away from classes A and B.
With no hope in that part of the deal, I pull out my phone and set it as a WiFi hotspot, making sure that I put one of my more complicated passwords on it, so that my account isn't sucked out dry in no time. Considering the guys who are in my class, this is possible.
As soon as the hotspot is ready, I connect my laptop to it and start enjoying the priviledge of Internet. Facebook, Flickr, the likes. This is undisturbed for about a minute or so.
Yuuji, all of a sudden, comes up to the fixed now teacher's desk and calls out:
'Hey guys! Listen up! As class representative, I have an idea! I think it's time we challenge class E to a Summoner Test War.'
He's nuts, right?
'You're kidding?' Hideyoshi calls out.
'A Summoner Test War? It's suicide!' Shimada calls out right after.
'Now! I can't be the only one tired of this crappy class!' Yuuji is not stopped, it seems.
'WE ARE!' the rest of the class calls out.
'Now, this is all we have to do! Win a few wars and class A's awesome stuff could be our awesome stuff!'
Everybody sighs.
'We're the lowest of the low, the bottom of the fricking barrel, guys! We're just a group of losers, no-one respects us because they don't even know we're here!'
'Speak for yourself,' I mutter.
'But what they fail to realize is that we have nothing to lose! We have to try! We can at least do that! And don't forget, we have this guy!' Yuuji points all of a sudden at Yoshii. 'Most people don't know the truth behind him. Guess what! He's the Probationary Student!' Chit-chat amongst the students starts.
'Eh... it's not a big deal...' Yoshii scratches his head nervously.
Then, a hand sticks out of the crowd.
'Do you have a question, Himeji?' Yuuji asks.
'Is a Probationary Student special or something?'
'Yeah. Not just anybody can be one. It's special treatment for a student who isn't very good in academics and doesn't seem to have any motivation,' Yuuji explains. Err, is Yoshii just an idiot?
'It's considered the same thing as stupid,' Hideyoshi pops out.
'Uhuh, pretty much someone who's completely useless,' Shimada joins in.
'Aaah, he really is special,' Himeji says then.
'Oh, and somebody else is here too... Hey you, with the laptop! Why do you even have one with you... Get over here!' Yuuji calls out. In a second, I realize that he's onto me. I put my laptop into sleep and into its bag before going over to Yuuji. 'Besides the Probationary Student, we also have the Exchange Student!'
'Hiya guys,' I just wave.
'He's come over from Ireland, and will be here, from what I've heard, for the next year!' Yuuji calls out to the class. It cheers mildly. 'Come on, say something else...' he whispers to me.
''Right, so... My name is Piotr Sekuła, I'm 17 years old, born in Poland... what else is there... oh yeah, the reason why I'm here is because my Japanese is apparently quite rubbish...'
'What'd you score in the Placement Test?' Himeji asks.
'I actually don't know,' I mutter. 'I was told that I scored about 350 on English, but that's all that I know...' The class picks up chatter.
'Wow... hardly anybody can score that much in English...' Hideyoshi mutters.
Then, I realize that the principal gave me an envelope before I left her office this morning. She said that there'll be the explanation of the system and the test scores. I put it in my chest pocket then and, with the sudden realization, I decide to pull it out and examine the contents.
First things first, there's a table of the results. With a grand total of 1,125, I scored most in English, then Maths, Physics and World History. Everything else is really outside of my interest. I guess that it must have been my Japanese that let me down for the most part.
Then, there is a somewhat brief explanation of the Summoner Test War system. 'Err, here's something interesting. Apparently, as an Exchange Student, I'm able to touch physical objects with my avatar,' I call out to the class in a rather low (for calling out) voice.
'Is there a pain feedback?' Yoshii asks with a hint of anxiety.
I read down the page. 'Nope,' I reply. The guy just collapses to the ground.
'Why... why am I the only one?!' he cries. 'I wanna crawl under a rug!'
'If we win the Summoner Test War, we can have a rug. And more! What do you say you guys, should we do it?!' Yuuji just feeds the class with propaganda of some sort and description. The class, for a reply, just agrees. 'Awesome. Let's start this off by challenging Class E. Akihisa,' Yuuji turns to Yoshii, 'since you're the ambassador for Class F, you have to go and officially declare the war on them.'
'Eh? Why me? Aren't declaring messengers from lower ranking classes normally given hell for it?' Yoshii attempts at protesting.
'No... this kind of thing only happens in the movies. You're an important ambassador. They have no choice but to respect you,' Yuuji replies. When Yoshii tries to protest again, Yoshii just places his hands on Yoshii's shoulders and says to him, 'Listen to me. This is an important mission. Only you can do this, man. You wouldn't wanna let everybody down, would you?'
Yoshii decides to go for it. As soon as he leaves the class, I place a rhetorical question, 'He takes propaganda like this in quite easily, doesn't he?'
Answer to Question 1:
Full answer is second, January 1st, 1973. Four marks awarded.
Short answer, 1973, yields two marks only.
Question 2:
Which two kanji compounds both mean "student" in English? Hint: they both share a kanji character. Marks awarded for getting the correct kanji only, presentation is omitted.
Right, that's the first chapter finished. I will include random questions like that as well at the end of each chapter, which might be a hint as to what to expect in the next chapter.
Thanks for reading, over and out. Reviews apparently don't hurt either, guys ;)
And sorry for the utterly long author notes at the beginning.