Chapter 3: Just A Normal Ten-Year-Old Bacon

Disclaimer: I do not own Gakuen Alice.

Sen was beyond bored. She couldn't take it anymore.

The way Jiino-sensei talked with no expression whatsoever in his voice was lulling her to sleep and she could barely keep her eye lids open. How anyone couldpossibly listen to him talk on and on about history every single day and even manage to take notes, she had no idea. She was surprised that no one took the chance of jumping out the window and escaping from this torture the minute the teacher's back was towards them. Believe it or not, Sen's body was urging her to just turn invisible and run the hell away from here.

She couldn't believe that school was this boring. Always taking on jobs and trying to survive with the scarce amount of money she had, she never even stepped foot into a school before, let alone one this fancy. But even so, she had always imagined that it would be more interesting than just sitting and listening to the teacher lecture you about the mistakes of dead people. (Seriously, what was the point of learning about which country won World War I if everything was resolved hundreds of years ago?)

Must not fall asleep... must not fall asleep... must not...

Slowly, as she lost the will to keep her eyelids open, her head hit the desk and she dozed off. Last night, after the job, she had been extremely tired and it was just impossible to stay awake with nothing interesting to do. For about five minutes, she rested peacefully—then, it was all over. (Did her sleep have to be interrupted every. Single. Time?)

"Jiino-sensei," Sumire raised her hand and waved it in the air to get the teacher's attention. "Sani fell asleep in the middle of your class!"

And just like that, Sen was wide awake again, bolting upright suddenly and knocking all the papers on her desk onto the ground. "What? I wasn't sleeping! I never sleep in class!" That technically wasn't a lie since I've never been to school before so there was no class for me to sleep in. "I was totally paying attention! You were talking about World War I and how Alices have saved many lives."

"That was review for yesterday's topic. We've moved on to something completely different," Jiino-sensei said firmly, narrowing his eyes slightly.

"... Oh."

The teacher rubbed his temples in frustration. "Sani, please step outside with me for a moment. I need to have a... chat with you."

Sen gulped and followed him outside, ignoring the snickers that some of the students were giving her. Once they left the room, Jiino-sensei shut the door behind them and turned around with an expression completely different than the stern one he had on earlier. He looked almost confused and... apologetic.

"I'm not allowed to punish you since I'd get in trouble if you were hurt before your job is completed, but it would be too suspicious if nothing happens. What do you suppose we do?" He asked her in a hushed whisper.

Oh, okay; Sen understood now. Even though she'd love to see the look on Sumire's face when Jiino-sensei announces that there won't be any consequences for her falling asleep in class (and yell out a loud, "HA! IN YOUR FACE!"), he did have a point and if she failed now, there would be no chance of completing the job. As much as she hated it, there was no way out of this.

"Alright then," She said finally. "Do whatever you would normally do to any other student in this situation and I'll just go along with it."

She watched the corners of Jiino-sensei's mouth curve upwards into a more than a little creepy smile as he tapped his wand-like pointing stick on his hand, as if he enjoyed punishing students. Then, he quickly composed himself and the usual frown was back on his face. As she followed him back into the classroom, she was still thinking about the sudden change in personality earlier.

Sen really hoped that she wouldn't regret this decision.

...

Meanwhile, in the classroom, all the students were crowded around Yome's desk.

"What are they saying?" Sumire asked the poor boy who was leaning back in his seat as far as he could to get away from the girl's ever advancing face. His personal bubble popped into a million pieces right there.

Well, maybe if you could back away a little bit and give me more space, it'd be easier for me to use my Alice without feeling suffocated... Yome thought, stifling back a sigh. Then, aloud, he said, "It's kind of hard for me to concentrate on their thoughts since there's a wall between us, but I'll try." He closed his eyes as the rest of the class leaned in, hoping to learn Sen's—or rather, Sani's—dirty secret.

"Pretend... don't tell them... can't know... job... disobey orders..." Yome muttered out some words that made utterly no sense to him at all. What the hell is all this? Then, his eyes snapped back open. "They're coming!" He whisper-shouted urgently.

The moment they heard the doorknob jingle, everyone scurried back to their assigned seats just before Jiino-sensei and Sen entered the room.

When Sen walked in, her eyes narrowed at the class in front of her, immediately feeling that something was wrong. Normally, she would've thought that once the teacher was out of the room, all the students would start talking and partying, while throwing confetti—or chairs and desks, in this case. But instead, everyone just sat there quietly and a stretched silence carried on throughout the class as if they were keeping a secret.

Finally, Jiino-sensei spoke up and announced the news to the class. "I have discussed the situation with Sani and she has promised not to sleep in class again." To this, Sen nodded, pretending to be ashamed at herself. "As usual, she will be punished accordingly, even though she is a new student."

Before Sen could even react, she was struck by a flash of lightning and the last thing she saw before she blacked out was that same evil-looking smile on the teacher's face from earlier.

... Yes, she fainted by a single strike of lightning.

Sen, who had been prepared her whole life for any kind of attack thrown at her—Alice or not—had fainted from a single hit by an elementary school teacher. Getting drenched with cold water multiple times? Fine, no problem. Having her hair catch on fire and almost burning to crisp? No biggie. But a single zap of a high voltage charge from what looked like a magic wand that was used in fairytales? She was now on the floor, completely unconscious.

Indeed, it was quite pathetic, and it would've been the perfect opportunity for any enemies to use this chance, especially now that everyone in the class has their attention focused on her. But thankfully, no one did attack and she was rushed to the infirmary, saving both her life and her reputation. (The latter being just slightly more important than the former.)

And of course, Jiino-sensei was punished accordingly by the higher-ups of the school for injuring an employee, to which he responded with a bow of his head and a ribbit from the frog that was always on his shoulder. (Seriously, Sen had thought at one point of his very boring lecture earlier, who carries around a frog on their shoulder all the time? Like... what?)

...

Sen's head of spinning. The entire room was spinning. Everything was spinning. On top of all the spinning, she had a huge headache.

She felt like bacon.

She was a human strip of freshly-cooked, sizzling, fried-just-the-right-amount, juicy, mouth-watering, pork heaven. The best kind of bacon. Perfect to be served in the morning with scrambled eggs and toast. (If you were into the whole cannibalism thing.)

And luckily for her, there were four hungry-looking kids staring right at her. Ah, I'm glad that I'm going to a good cause.

...

...

...

Wait, what?

She shot up on the bed she was lying on—bed? When did that get there?—smacking her head against the wall behind her in the process—ow—and got a good look at the people who were going to eat her. She recognized all of them as students from her class.

"Oh good, you're awake!" The girl she remembered was Mikan greeted her cheerfully. "You seemed pretty injured after Jiino-sensei shocked you, so we all came to see if you were all right. By the way, this is Hotaru and Ruka," She gestured to the people beside her. "And you already know Yuu."

Sen nodded slowly, still recovering from the surprise of waking up to all this. "Y-yeah, I talked to them earlier in the—"

"Hotaru is my beeestest friend in the whole world!" Mikan continued as if she didn't hear Sen speak. "We used to go to the same school, but when people found out that Hotaru had an Alice, they immediately transferred her here. I was suuuper sad, so I came to Alice Academy so that we could be together again!" The girl with pigtails then proceeded to embrace her best friend in a hug, squishing their cheeks together painfully.

No one asked for your life story, kid... and I'm so glad I'm not in Hotaru's position right now...

"Get your dirty hands off me," The short-haired girl pried Mikan off of her like a leech and dragged her out the door, all while talking in a monotonous voice. "Now that Sani is fine, we should go and let her rest. And no one will be able to get any rest with you around." The two of them left, Hotaru with a poker-face on and Mikan crying buckets of water.

"What a beautiful friendship..." Sen muttered sarcastically under her breath.

Now with just the class president and Ruka left in the room, she was finally able to breathe and think about the situation she was in properly. She sure attracted a lot of attention today, and it was only her first day at school. She had originally planned to keep a low profile, but that didn't seem very likely anymore.

"Sorry about Mikan; she can get pretty dramatic sometimes," Yuu said.

Sen blinked. "Oh, yeah. No problem."

"Anyway, we came here to tell you that our next class, students are divided up based on their Alices. The students from the elementary, middle school, and high school branches all gather together and..." Eventually, Sen just ended up zoning him out, nodding occasionally, pretending to listen and find it interesting. She already knew all about it from Narumi's very detailed—very boring—description on her first job for Alice Academy, so as Yuu explained about the Latent, Somatic, Technology, and Special classes, her eyes drifted around the room until they landed on Ruka.

More specifically, the rabbit he held in his hands.

Was this the same sort of thing as Jiino-sensei? Was it some kind of trend within the school? Sen watched intensely as the rabbit turned to face her, ears slightly drooping and nose twitching. It stared at her and she stared back. A staring contest? Bring it on!

After a few minutes, her eyes started hurting and they were threatening to close for just a second, and just as she was about to give in, the rabbit blinked. She continued to stare for a few seconds before her eyes lit up and a triumphed grin began to spread across her face.

"Haha! I win!" She declared a little too loudly.

Yuu paused his explanation and looked at her. "Um..."

But Sen beat him in talking. "Ruka, your rabbit really needs training in the art of not-blinking-for-long-periods-of-time."

"... You were having a staring contest with my rabbit?" Ruka asked, silently debating whether he should be concerned about this girl's mental stability or not.

"Yup," Sen chirped. "Anyway, I don't need to hear your long explanation about Alice-based classes and whatnot. I'll just go talk to Narumi-sensei and ask him which class I'm in and I'll be on my way. See ya!" She made an I'm-watching-you gesture at the rabbit before jumping off the bed and heading out the door, thought she wasn't actually going to find the blond teacher; if no one knew which class she was supposed to be in, that meant it was the perfect time for her to explore the school.

For the next ten minutes or so, she walked through the school stealthily, avoiding any students and memorizing all the possible escape routes, secret passages, and other useful things that might come in handy some day. Although it was probably a better idea to turn invisible, she didn't use her Alice for the simple reason of a challenge. Her jobs mostly involved infiltrating into places, which meant that she had to be able to move around easily without being noticed, so technically, she was training too.

After walking through the entire building and making mental landmarks, she went outside to where what looked like the garden was. Damn, this school is rich. Look at all this!

"What are you doing here?" Sen twirled around at the sound of a cold voice. She sucked in a sharp breath and put on the fake smile that she always wore when there were people around.

Busted.


Thank you again to everyone who reviewed. Now...

Who do you think the person is? And how will Sen get out of this one?

And please tell me what you thought of the chapter!

~Madin456.