The bell began ringing, signaling for the first lesson of the day. The year twelves made their way to maths with Zeus, calmly shoving aside the eighth years as if they were piles of rubbish.
Zeus stood at the front of the classroom and watched fondly as his students began piling in. There was Athena, his top student, and his favourite daughter. Then there was Ares, also one of his offspring but a horrible child, gets into so many fights and detentions. He smiled as Jason walked in, a natural leader if there was such thing. Aphrodite had to be the worst. She was horrible at all her subjects and used to go out with a different boy every week. Then he noticed that the class had settled and were staring at him. He smiled rather awkwardly.
"So, welcome to another year of Mount Olympus High," he said, walking towards them with his hands behind his back. "I'm guessing you enjoyed your holidays?"
Athena was so excited that she could barely sit.
"It was way better than sitting here and listening to you ramble on," muttered Ares. He was well known for making stupid comments in class and disrupting the lesson.
Aphrodite threw him an admiring look and batted her eyelashes at him.
Zeus inwardly winced, not that he was going to let anybody know. Instead, he straightened up and glared at Ares. "I would expect much better manners from my son."
"Yeah, you have about ten in this room right now, which one are you talking to?"
Zeus reeled back in horror. Athena gasped in outrage. Artemis stood up, her fists clenched into tight balls.
"Just tell me when, father, and I'll bash him up so badly that not even he himself will be able to tell who he is."
At that moment, Hera poked her head in. "Ares," she said sharply, "while I agree with your point, which is entirely true by the way, I will not have you speak that way to a teacher. Detention at lunch. And Artemis, if you lay a finger on him you will also receive detention. I daresay Hades will be pleased to see the two of you." With that, she withdrew her head and flounced away in a flurry of long midnight blue robes.
"Well," said Zeus mildly, "let's continue with the lesson shall we?"
"Can we please not? It's our first day of school," complained Achilles.
"No. You just had the holidays for goodness sake, you have no reason to complain. Me, I was stuck with Hera these past few weeks, and I'm telling you, that was not fun."
"Please?" whined Cupid, pouting.
Zeus thought about it. If they got free time then so will he. "Alright," he said finally, "you can do whatever you want within reason. I don't want the classroom completely demolished or-."
His voice was drowned out by a stack of chairs toppling over and crushing a table. On the way down, it brush against a beautiful mosaic that he had done himself when he was a kid. The mosaic fell to the floor and smashed into a million pieces. One of the pieces of mirror cut Helen on the leg and she began screeching her silly blonde head off. Another stack of chairs toppled over as Ares dove at Apollo and tackled him to the ground.
Zeus winced and hid under his desk. He could tell that this was going to be a long lesson.
Hermes emerged from the classroom grinning. He was sporting a large black eye and blood was trickling down one side of his mouth.
"You seem mighty pleased with yourself," said Dionysus, giggling as he usually did whenever he drank too much coke. He could get drunk on anything, even water.
"Yeah I managed to take down both Hector and Orion, well at least until Apollo punched me in the eye."
Dionysus nodded sympathetically as he happily skipped along, his small bare feet hardly brushing against the ground. Everything about him was light, airy and gravity defying. "Phineus elbowed me in the stomach so I drank some coke to make myself feel better. I have a whole carton of it stashed away under my bed."
"Well, what do we have here?" boomed a voice high above them.
Dionysus stopped skipping and looked up in fear. Hermes rolled his eyes. His uncle always loved to make an impression.
Hades glared at the two youngsters in front of him. "Shouldn't you two be in the swimming pools with Poseidon now?"
"Oh-" Hermes swore loudly, grabbed Dionysus by the arm and rushed off so quickly that he left an image of himself hanging in the air.
"Oops," said Dionysus gaily.
