Chapter Two
1316 hours, 20 October 2529 (Standard Calendar) / Room 16H
Five rows and four columns of desks are perfectly spaced apart, and filled with students all the way up to the back right desk, which was always empty. Students turned their bodies to gather in small groups rather than turn desks. Sam, Kelly, and John, however, sat in a straight horizontal line in the first row. Sam and John both turned in to face Kelly and the friend across Kelly. They both peered over her shoulders to see what Kelly was typing on Sam's laptop; it looked like final flares on the paper.
"Kelly, we already finished the paper this morning," Sam reminded.
"Yeah, but," she countered, " we forgot to answer the prompt." She was glancing from the keyboard to the screen. Miraculously, it was still a page long. Her hands relaxed and Kelly took a deep breath of relief, "At least Dr. Martinez doesn't care if it's printed or not."
Sam slapped his hand on her back, "This is why you're in our group." Kelly paused, turned her head towards Sam, and gave him a monotone stare before turning back to his laptop and ejected the flash drive.
"Now we're officially done with the project," Kelly announced, shutting off the laptop and pushing it towards Sam, who put the closed laptop back in his zip up case. "At least we finished before Dr. Martinez walked in."
And, speak of the devil, Dr. Martinez opens the door and quickly walks to his desk. He has an armful of papers in manila folders in one arm with a travel mug with thin wisps of steam in the other hand. He nearly dumped everything on his desk before sighing out of relief. He turned to his class, excused his tardiness, and scanned the room for empty desks; there was only one as usual.
The room quickly silenced as Dr. Martinez sat on his spinny chair and typed on the keyboard. Whispers quietly erupted as he did. The front-row-trio glanced at each other, then back at Dr. Martinez, who stood up, leaned over his desk with his mouse at hand, and finally stood up straight for his class. The chattering died out again.
"You can drop your projects off in the tray," he nodded to a black tray on the far wall labelled "5H". "And pull out the note sheets, if you printed them. I'll try to make this lecture quick."
Chatter on projects arose when about a fourth of the class stood. About two people actually turned in their projects right away, including Kelly, and the rest of the class double checked with their group to make sure everything was complete. One by one, the project leaders dropped in a stack of papers or a flash drive.
Dr. Martinez grabbed his stylus and tapped the board until a red background with white letters popped up; "League of Nations" his students read, but none of them looked like they understood what it meant.
"Is that what the UNSC called themselves before?" a student asked.
Dr. Martinez looked up at the ceiling for a moment, not out of sympathy of his idiocy but out of wording. "You could call it that …" Then he looked back at his students. "But I personally wouldn't. Would anyone like to humor me as to why?"
He could hear crickets in the background. Then a pale student raised her hand. His eyebrows rose with shock and eagerness. "Linda," he called and the class turned their heads to face her.
"The League of Nations was formed after World War One -"
"Why?" he interrupted, tapping his pen on his mouth.
"To prevent a country like Germany to become a threat." She blinked before continuing. "To force Germany to pay reparations.
Dr. Martinez chuckled to himself; he personally would've said something else, but that was for his college students. "You're one step ahead of my slide, Ms. Pravdin."
He tapped the slide without turning his body and more white words popped out. "To have a unified entity to prevent another rising country to threaten others." He saw his students drop their heads to scribble down the words, but he immediately went to the next slide. When his students heard his stylus tapped again, they looked frustrated that they didn't have enough time to write everything, then their mouths dropped with shock when they read the next slide:
& %%$&!#
He chuckled again, "You can add this to your notes." He grinned at the few who actually did. He tapped his stylus on the board again, this time it read: United Nations. "Now, this is what the UNSC called themselves before. Can anyone tell me which side the United Nations was on during the 20th and 21st Centuries?"
He heard the crickets again. Then one of the front row trio raised his hand, "John."
"Neither, they were neutral," he answered.
Dr. Martinez smirked, and wished this was his college class. He gulped his smirk and replied, "On paper, yes."
And immediately moved onto the next slide. Twenty minutes of nearly (he paused for about five seconds to sip his steaming coffee) nonstop lecture on the differences of the three entities passed, and there was about fifteen minutes left of class. The students were silent and a little suspicious, but this time, Dr. Martinez had nothing up his sleeve.
"I told you this would be short," he said, seeing their skeptical faces. "I have one paper to assign to you." The class groaned and sighed; Dr. Martinez mocked them, straightened his face, and continued, "It's short …" He checked the time on his watch. " … In fact, you might get a head start during the last few minutes. I introduced the three unifying entities. You must pick one and write a paper on that one. I want a brief history and two major events during those times and their significance. Then write your opinion." The class pulled out devices to research, tuning him out at this point. "I advise you avoid the UNSC, since most of you will pick it anyway. I'll be harsher on that one if more than half the class writes about it. I'll accept pair works, but no more than groups of two." He glanced at the front-row-trio before sitting back at his desk. "This paper is due Wednesday."
"Damn," Sam hissed under his breath. He leaned towards Kelly and whispered, "I think he's doing it on purpose."
Kelly rolled her eyes. "I think he knows that I do most of the work."
John admitted it to himself. He also knew that Sam does the least work, and Kelly does the most, so they should go together. He leaned in as well, "You two can work together -" They both jerked their heads towards him, "- I'll just do this by myself."
"You sure?" Sam asked, but he was actually thankful John offered to work by himself.
John nodded. Then he turned and saw the redhead female hunched over a small device that illuminated onto her face. A part of him wanted to go over there and see if she would work with him on the paper, but another part of him felt like she wouldn't. The latter lost to the first part, and he got up and slide into the empty desk behind her.
Disclaimers: Don't own Halo. I only own my OCs (here, it's Dr. Martinez)
AN: Please let me know if anyone is obviously out of character and what you thought.
(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧ Have a great day/evening