Disclaimer: I do not own the original concept for Battle Royale or Saw. I do not own the character Jigsaw. I do however own the students of this piece and the plot lines.
Introduction-Class 12D
Stanton High School: looks just like any other high school in the district. There are teachers, students, classrooms, school uniforms, school sports teams and, most importantly, school rules. But there's something a little different about this school compared to the others. The students aren't exactly…normal. They are all teenage delinquents who have screwed up their life in some way or other. Being transferred to Stanton High School was never a good sign. Some applicants at job interviews had been instantly turned away after their résumé indicated they went to high school at Stanton. It wasn't the best place to start your life.
But it was for this very reason that most of the students at Stanton worked hard. They tried to get the best grades they could and go off their drug and alcohol addiction or conquer their anger management problems, or whatever was wrong with them. Most students at Stanton tried to get their life back in order after being transferred into that godforsaken school…most of them.
There were still some groups of students that thought that by continuing to rebel against society they were being smart and individualistic. But when one man decided that this individuality had to be dealt with, the students of Stanton High School didn't feel like the victorious rebels…
The glorious sound of the bell ringing echoed throughout the classroom that one Friday afternoon. The relieved students had immediately stood up and started packing up their maths books and their pencil cases, preparing to go home after another irksome week at that pathetic excuse for a school.
"Hey! I wasn't finished with that!" Irene Hunter protested as Tina Marshal took back her exercise book. Tina was the smartest girl in the class and so after finishing the exercise early she'd already packed away most of her things, but being the charitable person she was she let her classmates copy her work.
"Sorry 'Rene, I want to get to my locker!" And with that she gathered her stuff and left.
"Just copy mine this Saturday." Andrew Lee shrugged at Irene. "There's more than one brain in this class you know." He gave her his usual charismatic smile.
Irene smirked. "I know, but how exactly is yours going to help out?"
"Oh yeah, remind me again who's Chemistry paper you copied off last year?"
"Good point, but who wrote your last three English essays?"
"Speaking of which, there's another one due next Wednesday, and I'm expecting more than 87% for it! That last essay was simply appalling!" he said sarcastically to the person responsible for his pass mark in English.
Irene gave Andrew a friendly push and rolled her deep brown eyes. "You're a jerk, you know that?"
He laughed and gave her a push back. "Love you too 'Rene."
"Oi small fry!" Jake Taylor's towering figure appeared next to Andrew's desk, his crooked smile decorating his face. "You ready for training tonight? Jason's gonna get pissed if we don't win next Monday."
"No shit he will! Don't worry I'll be there."
"You better be there!" Jason Adams piped up. "Or imma start cracking some skulls!" He smirked as he punched his own hand threateningly.
"Don't worry about it," Noah Griffiths snuck over. "We'll just make sure your girlfriend's at the game so if we lose you can let off a bit of steam in the back of your car with her." The guys started laughing as Jason went red.
Irene tried to squeeze past the guys. "Can you guys make way? I wanna get outta here pronto!" Andrew made a space for her.
"See you at the lockers?" She nodded in reply and left.
"Dude," Jake groaned. "When you gonna get the guts to ask her out?"
"What? Ask out Irene?"
"Yeah man! It's been a month since you and Sasha broke it off and I know you did it for that girl."
Sasha Allen (who was only a few metres away) used her golden hair as a curtain between her and the boys. She didn't want them to see her tear up, nor did she want to see Jake's motion towards where Irene just left. She thought it was better if she and her plump, talkative friend, Audrey Stoker, left the classroom as quickly as possible so she could go outside and smoke the remaining cigarettes in her pack.
Noah scoffed. "It's obvious why he hasn't asked her, the chick doesn't ask out the guy." Andrew shook his head.
"Fuck you Noah! And I don't like Irene, she's my best friend! Almost like a sister! I'd sooner ask out one of you fellas."
"Are you finally coming out to us then?" Rose Aronson tuned in at the wrong point in conversation and couldn't help but make a comment. "Hey Poppy! Andrew's gay!"
"I knew it!" Poppy White shrieked with laughter. "That's why he can't hold a girlfriend for more than two months!"
Rose leaned into Poppy's ear and whispered quietly. "Apparently it's also because he's small down there."
"Oh my god! TMI!" Poppy made a face of disgust, but secretly loved this new piece of gossip. "Oh by the way, I've got new info about Linda!"
Linda Greene heard Poppy mention her name in that malicious hushed voice. She bit her lip quickly moved out of the classroom so that she couldn't hear the newest invention of lies that those two loved to gossip about, especially if it was about her. I wish they would just stop talking about me. What did I ever do to them?
"Please tell!" Rose's eyes grew hungry for information.
"Well apparently…" Poppy and Rose walked off together, Noah's gaze following Rose's blonde hair and hazel eyes. Damn, I miss her.
Erin Lester-James sighed with relief. Finally! I thought school would never fucking end! Two days of freedom for recuperation, procrastination, and a baseball game, probably a good few hours of reading Game of Thrones. But first: Glee! As she opened her locker she saw a little yellow slip of paper fall to the ground. Someone had obviously slipped it in there through the crack on the side. She was about to pick it up before she heard someone call her name.
"Hey Erin!" Although the voice of Loretta Ryan could be heard from the end of the hallway, but thanks to her lack of height and the crowd of students she was harder to be seen. When Erin saw Loretta she wasn't smiling that cheeky smile of hers, but was instead looking a little confused holding up a small piece of yellow paper.
"I found this in my locker."
"Ditto." Erin replied as she picked up her own yellow slip and read it.
"All students from class 12D must attend an extra class at the end of the day in room S61.
Failure to attend this class will result in an immediate suspension.
The student will also be denied entry into the Stanton School Ball."
Erin groaned in frustration. Perfect, just what I needed. "Ugh, fucking hell! They're not serious! I wanted to go for a run before Glee started! Not sit in a classroom."
"What's it gonna be about?" Just as Loretta asked she felt a hand land on her shoulder.
"Sup Erin." She turned around to see the crooked smile of Eric Johnson. He held a little yellow slip in his hand and waved it in front of her face. "Care to explain?"
"I would if I could, but I am just as clueless as you are."
"But you're class representative!"
"They don't tell me everything." Erin shrugged. "Besides, this is fucking Stanton, the garbage bin of all high schools. It's probably going to be another drug talk or lecture about how worthless we are." She instinctively stroked the scar on her left hand, remembering the fight that she got into when –
"Hey babe!" The voice of Peter Bryson was heard as he slid through the crowd to get to Erin. He planted a kiss on her cheek and saw the yellow slip of paper. "Fuck. You got one too?"
"Yeah," she sighed "I'd skip it, but I already bought my ball dress." She leaned into his ear so that the people around her couldn't hear "and the underwear to match." A grin broke out on Peter's face.
"Hey, it's not the end of the world. Come on, let's go."
The other 12D students that had congregated around the class representative saw her leave and simply decided to follow suit, except for Loretta, who met up with Carla Briscoe, the girl with platform boots, bright red lipstick and highlights in her hair. She stood in front of the mirror she'd attached to her locker and checked out her reflection. Teeth: lipstick free. Boobs: even, and very visible. Eyeliner: Thick and dark. Overall: Perfect.
"Carla!" Loretta called out to her while throwing the paper on the ground. "The others are going, but have no idea what its about."
"Ugh, fuck." Carla closed her locker, rolling her eyes. She didn't really care whether or not she went to the ball, so it's not like that was a major consequence. But after that last suspension the month before, her mum threatened to sell her stash of coke if it happened again. "Fine, let's go". She took long strides towards the classroom, hardly bothering to see if Loretta's tiny legs were keeping up.
Three boys were in the classroom well before the others were, and they decided to pass the time productively.
"3.14159265358979323...um…323…uh. Goddammit! I always forget it after 323!" Stan Wilson screwed up his face and started hitting himself on the forehead, as if the next number would tumble out of his ear.
Charlie Graves shook his head in disappointment. "Pathetic." He said. "Only to seventeen decimal places? Come on, you can do better than that. 84626433832795028841…shall I go on?" He had a smug grin on his face as he pulled out an unsolved Rubik's Cube from his bag. Apart from the ability to recite pi to a hundred places, one of Charlie's other talents was his ability to solve a Rubik's cube at the same time.
"3.14..." he decided that this particular recitation had to be sung to the tune of the Mario Brothers Theme Song. He happily sang and twisted the Rubiks cube in his hand in all of these different directions. Stan started shrieking and rolling on the floor in frustration. Lleyton Brahms had flicked his long hair out of his face so that he could watch this display of annoyance. He instantly started bursting out laughing and humming along with Charlie (despite the fact that he could hardly recite pi to more than eight places, and the only way he knew how to solve a Rubik's cube would be to take off the stickers).
"Ah Stan," Lleyton smiled. "If you weren't here there wouldn't be any entertainment at all!" In response to this Stan stood up and waved his arms about in a windmill-like motion. He started squealing like a fire engine.
"Ooo-eee-ooo-eee-ooo-eee-ooo!" He wailed and swung his arms about and hardly bothered to stop when the door opened and his other classmates poured in, mainly since they were hardly surprised. Stan was always a little stranger than the others, and considering his usual company was Charlie and Lleyton, that was saying something.
Wendy Brown sat next to her boyfriend, Eric, and hung onto his arm possessively. She closed her eyes and relished his smell: a faint scent of deodorant being overpowered by sweat. He looked down at her and smiled at her calm face, the one that she looked prettiest with, the one that suited her perfectly. He looked to the door to see if the teacher would enter but instead saw Irene saunter in.
"Sup Irene." He gave her a nod, but immediately regretted it when he felt Wendy's body shift next to him.
Fuck.
Irene, who was his ex, saw Wendy frown and decided against going up to Eric and chatting. She walked over to Erin instead and dove into a conversation about some TV show. Eric looked back at Wendy and her calm face was replaced with a scowl.
"Hey," he stroked her hair. "You're coming over on Saturday right?" She smiled weakly.
"Yeah, I guess. Are you sure you want to?" she bit her lip nervously. He placed his hand on hers gently.
"Yeah, sure. I already bought the condoms." I bought and used some when I was going out with Irene he thought, but would never say in front of his girlfriend.
Michael Milne made his way towards the desk that was furthest away from Carla. He'd lost count of the number of times she'd threatened to hit him in the balls, and had winced whenever he thought about the number of times she followed through with these threats. It was a shame really, because he was one of Loretta's closest guy friends, but since she'd always hang out with "the nutcracker" (as Michael called Carla) he'd rarely had a chance to hang out with her.
The moment he'd sat down he yawned and folded his arms on the table to that he could rest his head. He was more relaxed than usual, which was weird considering he hadn't taken his Ritalin. He tried to keep his eyes open for when the teacher had come in. He'd made the effort to turn up, he figured he may as well be awake for it too, but dammit it was harder to stay awake than it seemed.
To try and stay awake he looked around the classroom and watched his fellow classmates to see if they were doing anything remotely interesting.
Jason sat with the rest of the basketball team and started complaining out loud about how they were missing valuable practise time.
Stephen Conrad, the notorious pyromaniac and smartest male in the class was having a debate with Tina, and because of her superior intellect he was clearly losing. Complex names of ridiculously difficult science concepts were thrown about in their conversation and it didn't seem like they were going to stop for a good while.
Poppy and Rose were giggling like the idiots they were, but the amusing part of the scene was the fact that Linda, Sasha and Audrey were huddled together and clearly talking about them. None of these things, or any of the other things his classmates were doing seemed to interest him in any way.
Oh fuck it. A bit of shut-eye never killed anyone he thought as his eyes conceded to his fatigue and gently closed. The sound of his rowdy classmates still continued to ring in his ears, but eventually began to fade into silence as his consciousness slipped away.
But unbeknownst to him, the rest of the class had begun to feel tired too, and the decreasing volume of the students wasn't just caused by Michael's lack of consciousness, but also because one by one, they began to fall asleep.
Elizabeth Newton had been sitting in the corner, completely oblivious as to what was going on until she eventually looked up from her book. The first thing she saw was the bodies of her classmates all slumped on the desk in front of them, all peacefully asleep. It was only after she saw this did she start feeling a little dizzy and tired herself. Her body moved by it's own accord and heavily fell onto the desk, her face resting on the book that she was reading. As her eyes began to close the last thing she remembered seeing was a dark figure wearing a festive mask enter the doorway, but before she could react the world had been cloaked in darkness.
Author's note: Not all of the classmates have been mentioned in this first chapter because I hadn't originally intended on writing it. I was originally going to launch into chapter 1. With that in mind after reading chapter 1 tell me if you think its better with the intro. Reviews will be much appreciated, and in fact I don't want to continue writing unless I know people are reading it. This'll be a long piece and I want to make sure it'll be worth the effort (I also have heaps of other ideas I could be working on and I want to know whether or not I should focus on those or this one)
In any case, please review.