"Flight 413 to Hell" by rainbowMonstrosity (aka selectivesnark)

Originally posted on AO3 May 19th 2015

Posted here at FFN on May 20th 2015

Chapter 1

Your name is Dave Strider, and so far, today is like any other day. You woke up, got dressed, shoved sugary, tooth-rotting cereal down your meal-chute, and drove your ass to school, where you sat through class for two periods before heading to lunch. Yippee.

What makes today just a little bit out of the ordinary is that today, you've been called to a meeting. Okay, well, it's less of a "meeting" and more of you and your friends sitting outside your school together at lunch as per usual, and coincidentally also needing to have a very serious conversations. John sits to your right, like always, face already buried in a ham and cheese sandwich, and Rose sits across from him, peeling open a yogurt cup and poking at it daintily. Jade stands at the head of the table, document binder in hand and looking genuinely troubled. You figure that it's got to do with your afterschool club.

"Guys," Jade says, calling your attention. You pause in popping open a bag of Doritos and turn your head towards her lazily, stopping short when you see the seriousness of her expression behind her giant, circular glasses. Jade doesn't normally look like that. "We have a problem."

She flips open the front cover of the binder, sliding the very first page out of the pocket and holding it out for all of you to see.

"Is that…a letter from the Dean?" Rose asks, taking the page from Jade, who nods affirmative.

"Read it out loud," she instructs, bringing her hands up to grab at her long, black hair. She looks stressed, and that's not something you're used to at all. To be honest, it's kind of freaking you out.

"To the student members of the environmental anthropology club," Rose begins. "We regret to inform you that due to the reallocation of a large amount of club funding, Skaia Suburban High School will no longer be able to subsidize all of the expenses associated with the environmental anthropology club's annual international research expedition." She looks up at the rest of you, blinking. You frown.

"So in other words," you say, crossing your arms, "they just shat all over the yearly field trip we've been waiting for since freshman year."

The thing about your club is that it's one of the most reputable in the school. The four of you have each had older siblings or parents in the club, and it's well known that you guys receive a nice chunk of change for your activities throughout the year, and that alumni from your club usually go on to receive serious scholarships to big-name schools. You still have to fundraise and shit, but not as much as others. Most of your budget goes towards buying books and access to databases and other information sources, but a lot of it also goes towards actual project materials that you guys use, like the programs on your club computer that allow you to create all of the presentations you guys make for various reasons, including student interaction, recruitment, and the YouTube channel that the four of you use to post educational videos about what your club does.

People can join, but once they learn of the actual workload the lot of you take on every day, most choose to back out. And since one year of membership is required to be eligible for the field trip that only upperclassmen can go on, your small numbers and exclusivity usually guarantee that the trip is all-expense paid by the school. Did you mention that you go to a disgustingly wealthy private school? Cause you do. And they really value student initiative in the sciences and education.

At least, until now.

"Yes!" Jade cries out, falling to her knees. She's so tall that she's still able to flop the top half of her torso dramatically over the table. "Shat all over it!"

Next to you, John chokes on a bite of his sandwich. "Can you guys stop saying 'shat', please?" he says once he's recovered his breath. Simultaneously, you and Jade look at one another, then back to John.

"Shat."

"God damn you."

Rose waves a hand to reclaim the attention of your group. "Now hold on for just a minute, all of you. There's more to the letter. We haven't lost all of the funding. The trip is still on." She glances at John with a glint in her eye. "Nothing has been totally shat on." John groans and covers his eyes, placing his head on the table and mumbling a lot of 'fuck you' and 'you all suck'.

You allow yourself a laugh before rounding on Rose again. "What do you mean by that, exactly?"

She holds the piece of paper up and continues to read. "In previous years, as I'm sure you are all aware, the high school has paid for the transportation, lodging, and partial meal costs of each of the club's members. However, this year the school board has taken into consideration the inclusion of less financially fortunate students. As a result, it has been decided that the majority of the funding for this year's excursion will provide travel and lodging to a small group from this year's pool of scholarship-aided students."

There's a beat of silence, but you're quick to fill it in.

"So they're sending some charity cases along who have no idea about the type of research we've been doing for the last three years?" You scoff. "Sounds more like they're trying to show off how 'socially aware' they are by giving the scholarship kids a free vacation."

"Dave!" Jade shrieks and kicks you in the leg from the other side of the table, Rose looking at you knowingly from next to her. "That's so rude! Don't call them 'charity cases'!"

Okay, so you're willing to admit to yourself that, yeah, maybe that was a little bit much. But still, your blood is beginning to boil over the fact that the funding that you've been counting on to get your club a trip out to an exotic locale for a project is being thrown out to kids who don't aren't even a part of the club.

You, Jade, Rose, and John joined up as freshman, and in that time have managed to garner the attention of national news and collegiate organizations for the type of shit you've put together by building on the foundation laid for you by previous generations of students, including your own older siblings. The four of you are a kick-ass team of skilled, self-educated hard workers in an underappreciated field, doing research, writing papers, and educating the masses on your own time, in ways that other kids your age couldn't even imagine. Just this morning, you'd heard a girl in your AP Bio class ask why dead people couldn't have their brains transplanted into living bodies. Meanwhile, you know that Rose had been in the library during her free period, finishing up the script for a video on the origins of political ecology and its relevance over the last eighty years, a video which has to be posted only a week from now.

And you swear to god, if you end up having to give up a specialized trip designed specifically for your yearly documentary—which, by the way, gets entered into a number of filmography and high school science competitions—you will literally flip your shit.

John pipes up before you can explain any of this to Jade. "So…what does that mean for us, exactly?" he asks Rose. "Are they still going to give us partial funding?"

Rose reads silently to herself for a second before pursing her lips. "It would appear that the plan is to allocate a majority of our previous trip funding to the scholarship students, to cover all of their travel and lodging, and a part of their meal cost. On the flip side, the only part of the trip that will be covered for the four of us will be our travel arrangements. It's up to us to either raise the money or produce it on our own in order to cover our lodging and meal costs."

John gasps at the news, then groans. "My dad is gonna be so pissed!" he whines. Jade reaches over and places on hand on his in sympathy, pouting.

"I know!" she says. "My grandpa wasn't counting on spending that much. He was already a little reluctant about giving that much money for food and incidentals."

Rose frowns. "We're going to have to cut down the trip time. Probably to a maximum of three or four days."

"The fuck?" you bite out. How the hell are you supposed to make a decent documentary with three days to set up, interview, and dramatize, all while toting along a bunch of kids who don't know what they're doing? That's a joke if you ever heard one. "Besides, Dirk was already being weird about me taking so much equipment out into the middle of nowhere and paying for extra insurance on all of it, and now we're only getting partial funding." Your hands clench into fists, even though your voice is remaining mostly neutral.

John, unsurprisingly, is the one who calms you down, setting a hand on your shoulder. "Hey, dude, it's gonna be okay," he says, as if you need actual consoling. "We'll come up with the money. If we raise some more between now and then, I'm sure it won't be a problem for your Bro to fill in the gaps." He looks around at all of your negative expressions with his big-ass blue eyes. "We'll make it work."

"Yeah, you're probably right." Jade finally lifts up her head from its place on the tabletop, revealing a red mark on her forehead and a buck-toothed smile on her mouth. She reaches over to ruffle John's hair, and it briefly reminds you that even though you're all in the same grade, Jade is almost a full year older than you three.

You also remember that the four of you are only in the 11th grade. Strictly speaking, you still have another year to create a really good annual documentary, assuming the school district is able to pull its head out of its ass and realize how important the work you guys are doing is by next year. But you really want this. How sick would it be to recruit some freshmen next year and be able to say that you guys kicked ass with a sweet presentation on Hawaii or wherever the fuck you guys are going that won you all scholarships to, like, Harvard or some shit? Plus, that would mean you'd have a second chance to shine and prove what you're really worth.

Maybe it's egotistical, but holy fuck you want it.

And no matter what the situation turns out to be with the scholarship kids riding on your coattails (because it's only January, and your trip isn't for another month and a half), you can be damn sure you're going to get what you want.

You're doing this shit, you're making it happen.

Optional title for this chapter is "A Gaping Hole in the Silver Spoon"

Also author is in the middle of AP testing and final exams, as she writes this she is literally dying from overexposure to calculus, so please forgive any nonsense or errors.

Also shoutout to my homegirl Riley (pierre's spectacles /u/5576114/) for beta reading.