Uhhhh... please read and review, and thank you! And I'm trying to make this funny, so... please hold on...

Disclaimer: Still nothing. Sad, no? j/k

Chapter Three:

The minutes ticked by as fast as the second hand would allow them to, and still Namine was flipping through her sketch book. Sora, quickly becoming bored, started to tap the end of his pencil rapidly against the desk top. It helped drown out the annoying jokes and insults the two newcomers were currently throwing back and forth. Even better, the dog or monster- whatever was out there- had decided to stake out the room, what with the loud thump the door made as it laid down beside it- according to Axel.

Kairi was seated across from him, frowning at the ceaseless pencil drumming. "Sora-"

"Yes, Kairi?"

"Could you stop that?"

"...stop what..?"

The auborn-haired girl sighed. Apparently, the lazy bum of a brunette's mind was off on its own planet. "Nevermind..." She sighed again, throwing a look over at Riku, seated- not of his own choice, of course- across from the redhead, Axel. He didn't seem too pleased to be there, to put it simply.

"Got it!!" Kairi's attention was brought off the silver-haired boy and his current situation to her art teacher, who's eyes were finally off her sketchbook and onto her class. The girl seemed much more at peace again, the same gentle smile back on her face. Namine left her seat once again, picking up a pile of white paper. She started to pass the papers out, ignoring the comments/questions the newest 'students' said.

Standing up at the front of the room once again, Namine set aside the remaining sheets of paper and waited patiently for complete silence.

It lasted for all about two seconds, which, if she had been quick enough, she should have taken advantage of.

"Hey- paper airplanes!!" Across from Riku, Axel was already bent to the task of folding his sheet of paper into the classic model of an airplane. Roxas watched for all of two seconds, grinning, before he started in on making one of his own. By the time the blond had gotten to folding the wings, Axel had completed his. He leaned back, one hand holding the paper airplane over his shoulder, and then let it fly up into the air. "Flight Number 108 in the air!"

It made a few lazy flips before it made a suicidal dive down towards Riku's head. The latter, who had been watching the whole procedure, noted the paper's descent and tried to duck out of the way. The plane followed his descent, nailing him in the back of the head. The second airplane followed the same route, adding only one extra flip in the air before diving downwards.

Roxas sighed. "Flights 108 and 113 reporting Mayday-"

"Nah, Rox'. Forget the mayday... Flights 108 and 113 are gone."

"Twilight Zone!!" The blond began to hum the theme music to the show, completely oblivious to the glare he was getting- well, his legs were getting- from Riku, still sprawled out on the floor with the two airplanes stuck in his hair. He considered untying the blond's shoelaces and reknotting them together, but dismissed the idea on the account that it wasn't original enough. Revenge would just have to wait.

Riku got into his seat again, his eyes two narrow slits. Behind him, Namine deftly plucked the two airplanes out of his hair and placed two new pieces of paper for Axel and Roxas to use. "Now, what you... five are going to do for the next fifteen minutes-" Originally she had planned on giving her students close to twenty minutes, but with the blond and redhead she had been forced to cut it down a bit. Fifteen minutes seemed a better estimate for their attention span, "-is to take a brief drawing test. What I want you all to draw is some recognizable object, such as a pet or a tree, that is G-RATED, SCHOOL APPROPRIATE , ecetera, ecetera."

Axel raised his hand.

"What?"

"Does 'ecetera' apply to-"

"Yes."

Namine left the table side and dtarted for her stool. "You can begin."

At Table One, Sora began to tap his pencil against the desktop again. Every so often he'd stop and move the point down over the blank piece of paper, then hesitate, and eventually end up back to the tapping. He sighed, his eyes turning towards the other occupant.

Kairi was working diligently on her drawing, one slim arm wrapped around the edge of her paper protectively. She didn't notice how he tried to tilt himself so far to either side of his seat in order to see her picture, nor even when he stood up slightly to look over her arm. Both methods didn't work- her hair blocked his view every time.

Defeated, Sora sat heavily back into his seat. "What'cha working on, Kairi?" he asked, hoping she'd move enough that he'd get the tiniest peek at her sketching.

"A picture."

Well, that was helpful. The brunette tried a different angle. "I'm not sure about what to draw... any suggestions?"

"Hmmm... how about... a Heartless?" The girl glanced up from him from under her auborn-colored bangs, a mischievous smile on her lips. "Or, how about a kitten?"

Sora frowned. "I'm allergic to cats."

"But you can still draw one, right?"

"I signed for this art class to learn how to draw!" The brunette threw his hands up in the air, getting frustrated. "I didn't know that I was going to have to take some test on the stuff before I learned anything. That is a cruel and unusual punishment- like math!!"

Kairi's smile, which was now tilted back towards her paper and sketched-in lines, only widened as the brunette's ranting continued on. It was a nice background drone to her working.

"- and those Shadow Heartless? They never stop moving!! How is anyone supposed to make a good drawing with one of 'em in it when they're heads keep bopping back and forth?! Like- like this! See, Kairi?! No one except Picasso could make a drawing of something that won't stop moving its head, and even he couldn't make 'em 3-D! Actually, he never does anything in 3-D. He cuts things up into itty-bitty boxes and puts them in random places on these huuuge canvasses-"

Ecetera.

Meanwhile, at Table Two, things were progressing a little differently. Riku had considered the space of his sheet of paper carefully, planning out the extremely rough, extremely uncoordinated sketch of something that should, by the time he was done with it, look a little like a raft. Hopefully..

He tried his best to keep his mind directly onto the task ahead of him, but his ears picked up on his two deskmates conversation. At times it almost tore him away from his work. Almost.

"What are you drawing, Axel?" Roxas had made the mistake of glancing off of his paper onto his friend's. His eyes had thus gone through an aerobic exercise through the emotions of confusion, amazement, and then back to a mixture of concern and amusement. "It looks like a dying animal."

The redhead stopped drawing, leaning back to better criticize his work- at which point Riku finally gave in and peeked as well. His lack of self-restraint resulted in several moments lost for drawing- and shrugged. "It's Bowser. And Bowser is certainly not dying." He looked over at the door and, as if on cue, the barking began again.

Poor Riku was rewarded a large, dark line scratched over his paper.

"See? Not. Dying."

The blond shrugged, turning back to his work. He came across some inner thought, and stopped again. "Ya know, Bowser does look like that when he's dreaming. Especially when he's chasing the mailman."

"Like a rabid rabbit?"

"Yeah."

Riku came to another pause in his work. His mind had gotten flooded with images of a white, foaming-at-the-mouth rabbit with long, ragged ears and fur, and two bloodshot, mad eyes, on the heels of an innocent, scared-out-of-his-mind mailman. It was frightening and hilarious all at the same time. Especially since the rabbit in his mind was still holding onto a carrot between its bunny teeth.

"Yeah.. maybe you're right," Axel continued to study his drawing while the blond went back to his own. After some time he decided that Bowser needed longer canines with more blood dripping off of them. When he had finished that task, the redhead studied the figure again and nodded, satisfied. "Finally- time to get to the real artwork."

"Huh?" Roxas looked back up again.

The redhead's hands was folding the paper carefully into several complicated shapes in succession, not saying another word no matter what question was put before him until he was done. When he did look up again to start talking, the formally plain, rabid-dog drawing paper had been folded into a perfectly crafted, jet airplane, with some added-on canons and missiles. "Ta-dah!!" He held it up for Roxas and Riku to see. "The picture of Bowser certainly puts the 'dog fight'-ing potential in this baby! F-16, bomber mix. Whaddyathink?"

Roxas considered the plane carefully, and slowly started to nod. "That's a good one..."

"You do realize that paper airplanes is not what we're supposed to be doing, right?" Riku directed his frown onto the redhead. Since his steady working pace had been broken already, it wouldn't hurt anything to actually get involved.

Axel arched one eyebrow. "She didn't say that I couldn't.., right?"

"Well.., no. But-"

"Ex-ACT-ly!" The redhead ignored the rest of the Riku's protests. He moved his arm back, and let the plane loose into the air. "Phoenix 8 up for battle!"

The plane swooped through the air, twisting around the table's occupants. The three teenagers watched it go and go, their eyes following it as it flew upwards over their heads. At that altitude it made another dozen or so twists in the air, as if a pilot inside was really deciding on where to go next.

Finally, it made its choice. The jet-bomber mix began its inevitable descent, landing straight into Riku's forehead. From there, it fell directly onto the desk in front of the silver-haired kid. "Phoenix 8 is down for repairs-" Axel moved quickly to pick the plane back up, but was stopped by Roxas's hand on his arm. "What?"

The blond pointed at the plane. "That is a good composition for a still life. No one move it!" He let the redhead go, swept up his pencil and started drawing.

Riku, to put it simply, was not pleased.

Smiling peacefully to herself, Namine allowed herself some five minutes to enjoy herself. Plus, her teaching philosophy included doing the work she demanded of her students. Her own 'test sketch' consisted of a peaceful garden, filled with flowering bushes, a flowing fountain, and the Keymaster beating up on a large horde of Heartless with his two friends and flashing keyblade. Kairi was tending some roses, while Riku was pounding the life out of some stray Shadows with his size twenty boots.

Nothing too difficult, of course.

The blond glanced up at the wall clock and sighed. Peace time was over... it was time to become the teacher again.

She tucked her pencil into the spirals of her sketchbook, placing it aside as she slid off onto the ground. "All right, guys," Namine clapped her hands together, sweeping her smiles over the room. The looks she got in return was surprise, annoyance, and a few grins- two aimed at something that had been going on before, she bet, "It's time to wrap it up. Since we've got some time ahead of us.." A large amount, since the door was broken and they were locked inside... but let's not get into that again. "You get to decide whether we want to do a class critique-"

"-a what?!"

"-Or you could just pass them in, and I'll hand them back at the end of class... whenever that is... and you can see how much you've improved. Got it?"

From the back of the room, Roxas sighed loudly and stuck his hand up into the air. "What is a critique?! How are we supposed to vote on something we don't know about?!"

"Right, good. Now, who wants to do a class critique?" Namine waited for anyone's hands to go up into the air, and counted all of one. "One. Okay... so you all want to just hand them in..?" Both Sora and Riku started nodding, already holding their papers in their hands. Her eyes were turned towards the back table, where she noticed that the last two students were talking to each in hushed tones, evidently discussing something, what with the wide hand gestures and shaking of their heads.

She sighed, mentally reminding herself not to strangle them. "Roxas... Axel..?"

Her voice brought an end to their argument. The two glared at each other and then nodded once sharply, in unison. Axel twisted back towards the front of their room and cleared his throat. "Ahem... Ms. Namine? We'd like to turn into our votes now."

"Oh, really?"

The redhead nodded, completely serious. "Yes. Roxas is voting for the critique thing-a-ma-jig, because he really wants to learn what the f- sorry, what you were talking about."

"..Okay.."

"And I would like to vote in favor of the same action, because it sounds like fun."

There were two audible groans from Riku and Sora, which were ignored by everyone else. Namine nodded, further to the two boys' dismay. "Okay, Axel.. Roxas. We'll do a class critique." More groans. "Okay, everyone bring their chairs and papers into a circle in the middle of the room- no... leave the desk behind, Axel."

Namine brought her stool and sketchbook into the slowly forming circle, picking out a spot between Kairi and Riku. This way she'd get to keep an eye on the blond and redhead- they just could not be trusted for longer than two seconds. "What we're going to do," She settled herself onto the stool, flipping onto the page she had sketching on earlier, "is show off our work, and I'll pick someone to say what they like... or dislike, I suppose, about the art. But this is meant to be constructive criticism, not-"

"Oh, wait a minute," Axel flipped one hand through the air, gaining their attention, "that sounds like what our parents say," he gestured between himself and Roxas, "when what they're really doing is complaining over how their ex-es ruined and spoiled us in our youth."

"No... this isn't the same thing." Namine decided not to follow up on that line of conversation. She turned her eyes onto Sora and smiled. "I think I'll start it off... Sora- what do you think?"

The brunette started slightly. "Well, you can go first if you want. I don't care-"

"I meant my drawing... what do you think of the drawing?"

"Oh! Well, it's uhhh..." His blue eyes took in the thin sketching, narrowing his eyes when he started to recognize some of the things and people in it. "Hey, wait a minute-! That's me.. and-and Kairi, Riku, King Mickey... Goofy and Donald-!!"

Roxas cut through the brunette's words. "Wait a minute- we were supposed to do portraits?! I just drew some stinkin' airplane he made up!"

Namine sighed and flipped her sketchbook shut. "Nevermind. Kairi- would you please hold your drawing up for us?" She turned her eyes down onto the girl. It was becoming increasingly obvious to her that Kairi would be the person to call on when help or normalcy was needed. It was either that, or letting chaos reign free in her classroom.

The girl obeyed, holding up her paper for all to see. A few quiet moments went by before everyone started to giggle and then laugh- save for one very embarrassed Sora and Namine. The latter teen was smiling. "Does anyone want to volunteer for the critique?"

"Kairi-!! How could you?!" Sora didn't bother with raising his hand- he was far too shocked at the scene his friend had decided on etching. He, drawn in a 2-D version of himself, was running along a beach, eyes and mouth wider than his head. Behind him, a large flock of seagulls were flying in, heavy frowns set over their cartoonish faces. "We agreed to never let anyone else know!"

Axel looked over at him. "Dude- that is not the worst thing she could have revealed about you. In fact, she could have-"

"Thank you for volunteering, Sora," Namine choose that exact minute to interrupt, "What did you like about Kairi's drawing?"

The Keyblade Master forced himself to take another, closer look at the work. He sighed and looked back towards Namine. "Well... minus the embarrassing part, it's pretty good."

"Okay, but what about the technique?"

"Huh?"

Namine glanced over the other students faces, dismayed at the numerous confused expressions looking back at her. "Like... perspective... the shading... um, rendering.. Just put some adjective in front of it."

"Oh. Okay. Um, well, the rendering and shading of the event is, uh, perspectively done."

The blond sighed. This was going to take some time, apparently.