ANNOUNCEMENT: This story is being edited. It is sad the site does not have the option of making a fiction temporarily unavailable to readers.
Written to project an image of the socially inept Sonic crew in an office drone's environment as well as to distort the stereotype of a competent teacher. Vocabulary practice with metaphors.
Disclaimer: this story contains characters and locations that to not belong to the uploading writer. They are copyright SEGA. The story is copyright Lord Kelvin.
School of Discontent
Chapter 1: Sisyphean Labors
It was a rainy night in a man's life. Restless, he sunk into the light in his own shadow, hoping to find an idea, the advisor.
Everything was begun by a thought in the man's living. Calculation, scheming, logic and brainpower were his closest and only companions. Along with disaster and failure that lured him into their clutches with cake.
They lied to him, so the man would scrutinize every detail, encompass all thinkable odds. Why? To shatter his plan at the very core with a mere drop of surprise. Again and again the process repeated itself: perfection, then taint followed by severance. A foolish IQ made him sink deeper after every fiasco.
It was his fault, he thought.
Sisyphean labors were becoming longer and more complex, but also futile as time moved forward. It was the obvious way out for an irrational genius, out into the minefield with no sense of direction. Any idea can be a minesweeper, once.
Fate loved to play the same practical joke on him. The man could picture her motherly eyes with a dastardly grin below. The situation was too serious to be humorous for him: self-esteem was missing, bravery retreated and genius betrayed him, leaving the being alone in the form of a spectacular idiot.
The human looked around to see nothing but fake perfection and a reminder left by success.
"I'm allergic to you," it said.
Circumstances had crossed the line. Being a mockery for inferiors, the theme song during comedy hours was more than he could take.
Revenge approached him with an idea to sell. Sanity was the price mentioned. Sweet was the illusion. After all, he could imagine himself as victor. The dream world was not far from becoming reality. The man gulped, anticipating the future gift with a smile on his face, an oblivious smile of a child ready to be sacrificed to the vicious gods. The price seemed reasonable.
He reached out to sign Asmodai's self-destruction pact without reading it. The mirage appeared too real to be a forgery. Reality was caught off guard.
Then, to the demon's misfortune, sanity let out a desperate cry. Its roots lied deep in the man's soul, too deep to be ignored even in the state of a self-absorbed desperate blob. His natural state.
Yes, he would drop the act, the careful scheming and his empire for something...more ingenious!
"Time for a change," the man told an inanimate object with a devious grin forming on his face.
Life is expensive. It's treasured and improved. Usually in a system a country's government presents to the citizens. It is a prison, as it taught the ones entering a painful lesson. It is a hospital, as it housed many sicknesses, physical and psychical. It is an amusement park for the thrill and simple fun it brought the participants.
However, it was none of these institutions. The name given was much more inhumane and shocking, but hiding its ingredients behind a forged friendship barrier at the same time. The slaughterhouse was codenamed a school.
The presence of the main executioner, the principal, was turning such a building into a little kingdom. However, the formal evolution made a slight adjustment to the machine to prevent it from leaving grounds under control. A silent assassin was hired to control the regents' actions and dispose of them if needed.
The assassin was always present at the beginning of each year, which took place during a meeting in August.
One of the assassins ("O'Really" was the name his briefcase carried on a silver plate), after finishing the condolences with yet another victim, was going to give the symbols of enlightened despotism: the keys to the principal's office to a successor, Shadow the Hedgehog.
O'Really's hobby was leaving people without jobs. Success was always in his pockets, on his bald head, in his palm and leather briefcase. The male's silhouette radiated victory from all one hundred fifty kilos and one point seven meters it had. The master of the trade had his roots far in the first grade of elementary school, where his very first executioner was dismissed due to the boy's actions.
However, Shadow was not the case. A hero by a political scandal and the favorite of Station Square's mayor was a smooth impenetrable wall in a matter of sneaky questions. The attacker's weapons were useless. Shadow's credentials were very effective. He was but an innocent soul trying to serve the community by providing it a good future in order to wipe out the naughty crimes of his angst-filled past from the public's heads.
A heated debate lasted for more than an hour in a small pink room. There was a pink table with a stool behind it, on which O'Really's person was doing its best in sitting with minor continuous fidgets. He was very close to a large window with horizontal blinds, letting a poor amount of light inside the room, partially subtracted by the man's body. Shadow, resting on a more comfortable chair fronted by the office table, was feeling more relaxed in the situation, as the silence extending for over ten minutes was giving him a moment to gather thoughts for a response to anything the examiner could say.
Lamps fixed into the ceiling and a fan on the table, cooling the piping-hot situation, made the only sounds in the room.
The tension was unbearable. Two icy glares collided, creating a temporary ceiling zero between them. Time seemed to slow down in that dark void of extreme temperature. Such unbearable conditions could not last long, though. There had to be only one slaughterer left.
Gritting teeth, O'Really did his best to climb that hedgehog of a wall, but silence, a deceitful fiend, was behind enemy lines, unable, if not lazy, to give a helping hand for the fat man.
"The position is yours. See you next year!" O'Really exclaimed to Shadow's surprise and rushed out of the office.
The hedgehog was stunned to see a professional admit defeat so easily. Shadow felt superior, feeding his hungry ego in satisfaction. Little did he know, that he should have credited not his skill or physique for the victory. O'Really's chair was just too uncomfortable for him to last!
Or until the first infraction, thought the school inspector upon leaving the building.
Shadow thought it was going to be an easy day, free of senseless commotion and annoyance. His intuition was right for over thirty minutes, an extraordinary accomplishment in the creature's pitiful life.
A white female bat wearing mind-bending clothes 'ideal for spying' entered the office without knocking properly. Thus, magnificently violating the etiquette.
The appointed headmaster was not surprised, neither was he impressed. His face performed a wild grimace, which could only be compared to the expression of a ten-year-old boy chewing a large unpeeled raw lemon.
"Rouge, what brings you here?" Shadow spoke in a formal manner, hoping it would make the abomination leave.
The fact that he was sitting on a chair with the ability to spin made him able to turn around and look into the intervener's eyes. He believed that it would be the worst option, though, so the back treatment was Rouge's prescription.
To Shadow's discontent, she was not intimidated by him.
Rouge walked up to the chief casually, "I've heard you got a job here a few minutes ago," she acknowledged and made a pause, getting ready to verbally stab the knife deeper. "The government gave me…some time off and I thought that you were nice enough to give me a position of sorts," she explained, standing near the chair.
"What can you do…besides the obvious?" Shadow asked, losing the comfort he had a few minutes ago, slouching a bit to get farther from her protruding obviouses.
"I can type pretty fast, I have a good memory, I am a good spokeswoman…" Rouge said, not intending to stop pointing out her perks.
Shadow sighed dramatically. The never-ending skill story was starting to irritate his nerve cells. He thought that such a reaction would end the tirade, but serious measures were needed.
"Okay, you can stop now! What kind of a job do you want?"
No matter how witty he was, he still needed a feminine spirit around, much like Sonic, the sly female thought.
The hedgehog saved her mouth before it could open and let the gruesome air violate it.
"Because I was thinking of making you my secretary, but…" the hedgehog thought aloud without a previously formulated plan.
It was curtain time for freedom and privacy. The parliament had arrived.
"It suits me just fine," she responded until Shadow could try to reason her out of it.
And I thought social situations were easy, he thought, starting to unravel in the chair now that Rouge's personal space was some more inches away.
A few more moments of company and Rouge's distance grew up to a tolerable state. Shadow was physically alone at last. Persuaded into being bounced and kicked like a soccer ball, he felt like a hungry unarmed infant put against ravenous lions.
The feeling was also a defensive reaction to Amy's arrival.
No, not her! Shadow exclaimed in his mind.
Amy's colors unstoppably shone in the room like a bright blinding black hole, complemented by her cheerful smile and girlish walk-rate. The mistress had arrived and Shadow knew it well.
The female hedgehog had a walkie-talkie in her hand as an additional pressure technique. She didn't know it meant pressure. In her cutesy language, it was just another way to motivate people to be friendlier. After all, if it's not the smile, calling the proper people in the right place would surely change someone's attitude.
With an abusively cheerful face expression, she greeted the headmaster, who was dreaming about the positive sides of being a single-cell organism at that moment. It was a desperate move to save his intelligence or its remnants, at least, from the pink swarm of brain-devouring locusts.
Meanwhile, the monstrous incarnation of attitude approached Shadow, until he could feel everything that his soul resembled sucked into the joyful empty hole. He could see her carbon dioxide spread in the room, slowly turning the air into deadly poison, intending to victimize and murder him. Shadow's heart beat rate was getting faster. The male's weakened mind could not push the nightmare away.
It became obvious: she was still there...breathing, violating him.
The ageless entity swallowed all decency and self-respect he had like a pill and let it dissolve in stomach acid. Then, he was able to record her words in his brain and reply to them on the level. Eventually, he couldn't recall what she said.
"Got it?" she asked, unaware that Shadow was not even starting to get anything.
"Yes," he replied as softly as his ego allowed.
"Thanks! So make sure Sonic is here tomorrow morning!" she exclaimed, leaving Shadow's eyes quivering in resonance.
To the gloomy party's luck, her walkie-talkie started buzzing. It was a sign for her to leave the throne room to give Shadow some privacy with the gadget. Timidly, the dark hedgehog pushed a round button on the metal box with a mounted antenna. A siren that erupted out of the speaker scratched Shadow's eardrums. It was the climax, a false alarm in Shadow's terms.
"Did my sweet little pumpkin explain everything?" came out from the speaker in a mangled robotic tone.
"I have no idea," the hedgehog replied, inspecting the faulty device.
"That's what I thought. After breaking through a bank and seven surrounding buildings in an attempt to catch a few robbers, Sonic's debt to society grew to two very large monetary units. You may be his last chance," the voice from the box explained, slightly annoying the listener.
"I'd rather him somewhere underwater…" Shadow thought aloud, looking for the machine's production date and place of origin.
"Remember, we made a deal and the government is always right!" reminded the loud apparatus.
"Somehow, I-"
"You don't know that G.U.N will be checking on you soon! That's right! With my help and your heroism towards Sonic, secret services will never again seal you in a plastic bag for another fifty years!" the foul machine exclaimed, rudely interrupting Shadow.
Finally, Shadow's search for knowledge ended with a glorious frown and a thought of telling the dignitary to advance his technological level to twenty first century, "Mayor…" he had begun before the machine decided to cherish his words with a retro smoke screen and a three volt discharge. "Have a nice day!" was all Shadow's ultimate state could come up with after seeing the colossal annoyance that ancient technology caused.
Stunned due to a disturbing battle with a metaphorical Smokey the Bear and being ridiculed by a female's questioning gaze, he stood there, not leaving a moment of thought behind like always.
I wonder what's worse, being eaten by two minor annoyances or facing a really big one?
His ears started twitching. Alarmed by the phenomenon, precision looked around suspiciously expecting to find a hidden intruder. Shadow was unable to tell a difference between paranoia and intuition, which left him with but a penny of a choice.
"I know you're here! Show yourself!" he ordered the air, despite the fact that such a deed could have made him look silly beyond belief.
"Heh, all right," the echo responded to the scholar's discontent, proving that sanity does not run away when abused in Shadow's case.
A purple male chameleon wearing an outstanding amount of wardrobe elements, which made a total of gloves and shoes, appeared before Shadow. The figure was alien to him at first sight, but fail-safe memories resurrected the past.
"What do I owe you?" the tormented hedge asked.
Shadow was not ready for being spiritually thrown into a tub filled with lemon juice again. Therefore, by all means he tried to prevent such an outcome. Luckily, bad luck fell out of commission.
"Nothing. A few people were here earlier. I thought you'd need some help," the chameleon stated.
A painkiller would not have soothed as much as those words, but the information was not yet sufficient.
"I'm listening."
Shadow was in his natural element then. A good portion of evil was what he needed to serve his guest. He was fortunate to find a hungry victim, pawn-to-be.
Settling plans and paperwork didn't take long with the calm and disciplined ninja. For once, Shadow had a trustworthy ally, a 'little brother'. Perhaps, the hedgehog was loaded with treaties and agreements, the weight of which would have easily crushed an average person, nobody forbade him to share the weight.
The amusing daydream ended just as it started, quickly, with Espio's departure. Again, the cold-hearted hedgehog was left alone, defenseless in the warm-colored room, haunted by the happiness industry, forcing people to smile, hidden in every square inch of paint. However, shuddering physically was a luxury Shadow couldn't even rent.
It would be disturbing to work in such accommodations, Shadow thought, ignoring fear and a crawling suicidal urge.
Two more things didn't let him calm down: a filing cabinet and a clock on the wall that was one hour behind. It appeared to be a dilemma of time against responsibility. Shadow wanted to take the first and leave the latter, to which, unfortunately, he was chained. It was possible for him to choose both, but soiling pleasure with smelly dissatisfaction was the worst combination his logic brought up. Should he pick the clock or the cabinet? Unable to decide, he used the trusty eeny, meeny, miny, moe to choose which to solve first.
Let's get employment over with, he thought.
A pointy-shaped scarlet-ink-filled weapon appeared in his right hand. Shadow decided to make a mass trial of very private proportions. It was supposed to be a surprise for the doomed defendants. Heads were going to roll in that kingdom. Besides, he just liked crossing people out people out of existence with a swipe of a pen.
Pulled out in alphabetic order, the innocent-looking files were a gold mine for cackle-enducing excuse lists and otherwise delicious private date. Word by word, sentence by sentence, Shadow's stroll through people's lives was slowly reaching the finish with three casualties and counting.
The clock couldn't stop him from hurting others. It couldn't even stop itself, even if it was running an hour late.
Chemistry, Mathematics, Physics, History, Literature, Gymnastics and Technological Education had their people brutally removed by the mighty principal's pen. Their names were torn out of the school's documents, just like their salary was torn out of their hands.
With the formalities done, Shadow could finally escape from the rosy torture chamber.
As he left, everything he experienced in it was put aside. Sonic's rival didn't care. He was the new executioner king. Yes, the kingdom was pink, but not for long!
Fortunately, the hedgehog didn't know what practical jokes fate had prepared for him by that time. He was safe from depression and paranoia, but, unluckily, not from a bundle of circumstances flying his way.