By the end of the day, Ace had managed to find out more about what had happened in homeroom, mostly by tracking down and beating it out of his 'friend' Thatch. His 'friend', who shared the same homeroom as him had thought it would be hilarious to watch him burn by letting him sleep through homeroom. Thatch was a bloody traitor.
Sleeping through homeroom was the problem. Apparently there wasn't an even number of boys and girls in the class. So the sleeping student and the late student, Luffy, were paired together. Now Ace's main concern was surviving the project with a hyperactive partner and a creepy doll.
Ace grabbed his bag from the hallway floor, slammed his locker shut and pulled out his phone. He really considering just walking home or hanging out with Marco. He'd do anything to just pretend the project didn't exist. But he needed to get a good grade in the class and this was the only real grade in the class. That and Thatch was probably whining to a disinterested Marco about how he had been 'victimized'. He could imagine him now with that Elvis mug of his just laughin' it up. 'I need to shave his head the first chance I get.' Realizing he had been scowling at his phone for a good 10 seconds, he sent out a quick text to Luffy.
'I'll be at the front gate in 5.'
Not 5 seconds later his phone rung with a response.
'OKAY! Lola missed you! :)'
Ace stuffed his phone into his pocket told himself this was a major part of his grade and dragged himself to the front of the school building.
Luffy beat him to the front gate but considering his energy and the dread Ace was carrying around that wasn't too much of a surprise. He was waving goodbye to two guys one of which had weird green hair. But once they were gone and Luffy spotted him, he started jumping up and down and waving his arms around to get Ace's attention, as if he could have missed him.
"You took forever you know." Luffy said as soon as Ace was in hearing range, which Ace found out was still pretty far away. "I'm starving! Let's get something to eat!"
"I thought we were going to go over the project." Ace said once he was within actually speaking range. He came to a stop in front of the ever smiling kid and crossed his arms. He scanned Luffy quickly as he started talking about some 'amazing' restaurant. 'Lola' was nowhere in sight. 'Probably in his book bag. Huh... I wonder if we could get points off for that.' But it was no use contemplating how they were going to be graded until he got a chance to get his answers from Luffy which might be a ridiculously difficult task considering the way Luffy was still going on about the food.
"Alright let's go." Ace sighed "We can talk at the restaurant. It better not be far."
"Yes!" Luffy cheered even going as far as to throw his arms in the air. "You're the best Ace. Let's go!"
And with that Luffy excitedly turned around and started marching, oblivious to the nervous reaction his statement got from Ace. 'Really he's way to honest and doesn't seem to have any kind of filter.' But Luffy kept on marching swinging his bag back and forth, excitedly talking about the restaurant and Ace followed.
"_ the ramen is the best, but their sweets are even better than that and the meat it the most awesome. But meat is best. Always. Oh and I almost forgot about the_"
'Just how much was he going to eat?'
"That's your fifth bowl in the 15 minutes that we've been here!" If he weren't seeing this happen right in front of him, he wouldn't believe it was possible. 'Is this kid secretly a world class food eater?'
"I'm hungry." Luffy slurped up the last of the bowl, wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve before eyeing Ace's unfinished second bowl of ramen. Ace had never had the pleasure of meeting a talking vacuum before but apparently; they came in the form of skinny teens that could devour just about anything in sight. "Are you going to finish yours?"
"Uhhh, only if you promise not to get any more." Luffy started bouncing his head up and down in agreement. Ace made a face and pushed his bowl over with his chopsticks, a little afraid of losing his fingers. A second later, the food was gone.
"Wasn't that yummy? Makino makes the best food." Luffy sat back in the booth and patting his stomach.
"Yeah, yeah. It's great, Makino's great." Luffy beamed at him. Ignoring the fact that Ace couldn't have known who Makino was. "So spill. What's this project about?"
"Oh okay!" Luffy jumped up in his seat sitting up straight punching his fist into his open palm. He had to lean away from the enthusiasm. "We gotta take care or Lola until the end of the year! And we have to take turns and plan our life together as husbands! Yep that's all, easy."
'Easy… wasn't the word he would use.' "Take turns doing what, exactly?"
"Taking care of Lola. She's not turned on now but we gotta turn her on by tomorrow morning and then feed her and change her and play with her and sleep with her and stuff. If we don't she'll cry and stuff and the teacher can tell once they get'em back. Oh they can tell where Lola was at the end and stuff too, like to take of points at the end. Oh and burp her. Hey, what's burp her anyways?"
Ignoring the inane question and rambling, Ace held up his hand and focused on the most important part. "Wait, she wasn't on earlier? Then why was she, it, crying in the hall?!"
"Huh." Those big owl eyes blinked up at him before realization dawned. "Hmmmm... I dunno. That's weird."
'More like creepy! Shit.' "What do you mean they can tell where she is?"
Luffy threw his bag on top of the dirty table and nearly stuffed himself inside as he started rummaging through it. Luffy's muffled voice drifted over to Ace as he answered.
"Yeah the teacher has some chip or something inside Lola and they plug in this thing at the end to download all this stuff for our grade. Here I have a paper for you!"
Grinning Luffy came out of his bag clutching a wrinkled paper and it in the other. It looked just as creepy as he remembered. Luffy handed over the paper to Ace and set the doll down in the middle of the table. He reached over for the paper keeping an eye on her at the same time.
Grudgingly, Ace focused on the paper and realized that he was looking at the grading rubric for the project.
He cut his gaze up to Luffy. "You had this the whole time…?"
"Yep!" He grinned as he started swinging his legs under the table, looking like a happy kid. "Mrs. Robin gave it to me for you."
'Okay whatever; it looks like he was right though… They had to switch off at least once a week taking care of it separately and then together. Once they turned it on the doll would start recording information about everything they put it through and they had to turn it on by 7am tomorrow. The thing would even be able to tell where they put it to sleep?'
"Okay, we should probably wait to turn it on_" Looking up Ace saw Luffy holding the doll upside down. His tongue was poking out of the side of his mouth in concentration as he pressed what could only be the on button. "What are you doing?!"
"What?! What?" Luffy jumped, dropping the now recording doll that promptly began to wail. "Opps."
"I see a pattern here." Ace muttered as he let his head drop to the table. Watching as Luffy scooped up the doll and started cooing.
"That doll isn't going to be sleeping at my place." He said flatly, looking down to give it a wary look from its place in Luffy's arms as they left the restaurant.
"You know you're not going to be a very good dad like that." Ace could hear the upturned nose and crossed arms that accompanied the affronted air. "Lola has only ever loved you. Isn't that right?"
He could only watch speechless as Luffy cuddled up to the doll rubbing its glassy eyed face up against his check. Luffy, somehow mistaking his expression for some kind of regret shoved Lola to Ace.
"You know Lola might forgive you if you give her a kiss."
"Like hell!" He jumped back to avoid it on instinct, only to flush red a second later in embarrassment as Luffy blinked up at him in surprise.
"I – I mean you can just keep it for the first week and then we'll switch off." Ace stammered, watching helplessly as a mischievous smile started to creep up Luffy's face.
"Shishishishi. Okay I'll take Lola this week but you've got to call her by her name from on now." Luffy held out his hand palm open for Ace to shake. "Deal?"
"Fine. Deal." He grimaced. He shook Luffy's hand and Luffy nodded with the most serious expression on his face that Ace had seen yet.
"Okay! See you tomorrow. I'll make sure Lola looks pretty for her first day of school." That was it, Luffy walked backwards, waving as he disappeared from sight. 'Good Luck.'
Dropping his hand, he turned to go home as well.
He was going to have to see that thing, Lola, every day until the end of the year thanks to the requirement that they take care of it in homeroom with their 'significant other'. Then he was going to have to take it home and take care of it himself. He wondered if he would be able to pass this class or maybe ask for a less creepy doll. At least Luffy seems to know what he's doing when he isn't dropping it or stuffing it into his bag.
Five minutes later, he was home and more than ready to toss his stuff.
"I'm home!" He called out as he kicked his shoes at the door.
"Welcome home. How was school?" His mother, Rouge, came out of the kitchen drying a bowl. "There's some food in the kitchen if you're hungry."
"No thanks, I'm good. School was fine." He didn't see any point in telling her about his 'marriage' just yet. He loved his mother dearly. She was all the family he had and he knew it must have been hard on her to raise him on her own after his dad left while working full time. But he knew she would only find his predicament amusing and want to be introduced to his 'husband'.
"Glad to hear it. Don't fall asleep and miss dinner, Ace."
"I won't." He called back as he started up the stairs to his room.
'Maybe he could get his mother to take care of it when he brought the thing here.'
Okay, I had a plot for this story, still do, but it seems to want to do it's own thing so I'm just going to go with it and see where we end up. I hope you enjoy and review!
P.s. sorry for any grammatical mistakes this took longer than I expected to finish.