Nora drummed her fingers impatiently against the desk as she looked at the clock for what must have been the twentieth time. Six minutes. She had been sitting there for six minutes of their three-hour detention and she could no longer sit still. Propped against her chair was a backpack with nearly six hours' worth of schoolwork, but the words on the book in front of her were just blobs of colour that danced around the page. It would be fine if she were in the library or her room, but here she suddenly wanted nothing more than to scream or be anywhere else. Being told what to do never sat well, it caused her to think solely of the opposite. Being led was fine, it did not even need to be subtle, but this was torture.
A pencil flipped through the air and bounced off of Nora's head, who spun around with enough energy that the desk toppled to the side. Neo stared at her, smiling, her head held by a hand supported by her own desk. She blinked at Nora, before her now empty hand placed a finger over her lips. Neo had made some progress on her own notes.
"You shush! I can't stand this. It's so dull, and why this room? and what am I supposed to do?" inquired Nora, more as an attack than a curiosity.
Neopolitan pointed to her own open notes, then to Nora's bag.
Nora growled her frustration. "I know that! I can't study like this. It's too quiet, too empty, too . . . nothing!"
Neopolitan gestured toward the whiteboard in a sweeping motion.
"What? Doodle until I get high?"
Neo shook her head and walked to the board herself. The first pen was pale, the ink low, the second worthless and tossed diagonally across the square room to the bin. The third marker was used to draw a grid, before it was whipped at her teammate. With a point to look from the board, to Nora, and back at the board, Neo felt her point was made and returned to her own stack of assignments, bending to pick up her pencil along the way.
Nora caught the pen, but was apprehensive as she approached the board. Only once Neopolitan had settled back in did Nora skip back to her upturned desk for her textbook, retrieve it from the floor, and take it to the front of the room with her. Nora was an active studyier, made most evident when she failed to accept the quiet habits of others as productivity. With this simple aid she set about simplifying the book and reorganizing it using the grid.
Twas not long before the board was filled. Neo looked up to find Nora seated in the spot in front of her, backwards, watching Neo study with an air of fascination. Nora had thought she was being sneaky, but the breath that tickled Neo's hair meant that she could only be ignored for a few minutes.
Neo's eyes slowly moved upward, unsure what to do with her pencil. She settled on swiveling the pencil tip over her middle finger and bopping Nora's forehead with her palm in a quick motion, pushing her companion backwards into the desk.
Nora grumbled, rubbing her head, "Neeeeeeeeeooo, what was that for? I was just checking on what you were doing since I finished."
Neo looked from Nora, to the board, and back. "Sssstud-dy-i-ing. I-it's been n-n-not th-th-thir- half an h-hh-hour."
Nora glanced at the clock and pouted. "It has too!" she countered.
Neo shook her head and pointed to Nora's desk.
Nora continued, "I was studying, but then I got bored and you made the grid and I sorted out the chapter, but then I ran out of room so I wrote smaller, then the chapter was over so now I'm here and you were just reading."
"s-s-stud-d-d-yin-ng." corrected Neo. She sighed and looked about the room, willing for some idea to come that would allow her some peace. Alighting on Nora's bag, she looked from it to her own book, placing a hand on her page and flipping the cover closed before tapping it and looking to Nora.
Nora took a moment to process the question, her attention shifting from Neo to the book a few times, then to her own bag. "You . . . want . . ." she began, her speech slow as she tried to put the clues together. "to read together?"
Neo shook her head, but offered no further hints apart from a quick glance to Nora's bag.
"To use my book? No, you have yours right here and I need it for studying too."
To this Neo made a large sweep through the air with the hand that had been on the book, her other flipping it back open. She pointed at Nora's bag, down at Nora's seat, then made a circle motion mostly parallel to the floor.
Nora retrieved her book of the same title and sat in front of Neopolitan, the desk and seat now turned to face her. "What now?"
Neo pointed to the sixth question on the exercises page at the end of a chapter, then at Nora. Nora hurriedly flipped through her book, with peeks at Neo's, attempting to find the question. She mumbled it out loud as she read it, before answering it easily. The answer proved satisfactory when met with a nod and a gesture to continue to Neo's turn.
Nora thought about it, not wanting to request a response that would take too long for Neo to say, her attention span wasn't long enough for that. Skimming through the questions she settled upon a solution and gave Neo a definition, taking great care to not give away the word. Neo smirked and flipped two pages back, pointing at the boldface word with barely a glance at the page. This back-and-forth lasted long enough to finish out the first hour of their confinement, but no further.
Instead of asking a question of Neo, Nora groaned as she stood up, stretching and shaking her limbs. "This is boring. Too much sitting."
Neopolitan stood up and pushed past her teammate to rifle through her bag. A smile crossed her face as her fingers located a box of colored pencils and crayons; next to be retrieved was a grimm anatomy textbook packed with loose sheets of paper haphazardly closed between pages in the sections covered by the lectures. With a thump both were placed on the desk behind Nora's first, and she tapped them twice when she turned to Nora.
Nora grumbled as she walked over, not curious about the next stage of punishment Neo had to offer. Her demeanor changed when she saw the small pencil case, so much so that she vaulted over the armrest to the chair, landing with her feet on the seat before sliding them under the desk. Her hand on the case, she paused. "Really?" she asked, looking to a Neo who nodded. "But I thought Coco told me to always do this one last, to save if for when we are all in the room after the library closes?"
Neo shrugged, that was not her current concern, and stepped away to swap her closed text for a second from her own bag. She had brought only three, one for each hour. Perhaps in the hour, at most, that Anatomy could occupy Nora she would be able to come up with the next idea. Twas a wonder Nora could not come up with study techniques on her own, although perhaps those were simply not quiet or solitary enough for others to appreciate. Thankfully, Ren had helped the team with some ideas early in the term.
"Neeeeeeo." called Nora, breaking what had almost sounded like a normal pair studying quietly. Nora looked to the one she called, who had intentionally held back from looking up. Unaware of the possibility that she was not heard in the oppressive silence she pressed on. "I'm out of paper."
Neo reached into her bag, eyes still on her handwritten notes, and threw a different notebook at Nora without a thought as to which it was. The pages made a ruffling sound as the spiral-bound opened in its flight before clattering to the floor beside Nora.
Nora bent to pick it up, struggling to bend and reach over the armrest. "Okay, this helps, but it has lines."
Neo finally looked up at Nora, who sat up and looked behind her for a response that did not come.
"Well, I drew all the parts of a beowolf that I didn't have already, but I am tired of drawing now." admitted Nora, reaching behind her for something on the desk. "Grimm are all black with a little red. Even using purple doesn't make them more interesting." she complained, holding up a short purple pencil, about half its new length. Her black was half that, and a small pile of pencil shavings were pushed to one corner of the desk, small ones that had escaped the encased sharpener.
"O-ora-ange" suggested Neo, her patience in walking her teammate through studying wearing thin.
Nora looked to her desk, her pencils and papers. "But it's still just a dumb, boring grimm."
"Th-th-en d-d-draw ssssom-th-th-thing else."
"Okay!" responded Nora with a bounce as she turned back to her desk.
Twas not long before a sheet of paper slid over Neo's text and notes. It was nearly entirely bright colors, with just a few errant streaks of white, on an unlined sheet of paper. The page was filled with overlapping ideas, a doodle of Neo, a smashed wall, a rainbow being walked on by what were likely grimm, lightning, a dinosaur eating from a pile of books, and different types of vines that wrapped around all the elements, including a little house in the bottom corner. Heavy black from the other side managed to peak through.
Neopolitan flipped the page over, revealing the grimm she did not see as her two brown eyes met Nora's. She knew a shadow of that grimm would be somewhere on Nora's desk, book, or notes. She slid the paper back to the desk in front of her, towards Nora, her attention going back to her studies.
"Don't cha like it?" asked Nora, disappointment evident as she turned the colourful scene back up.
The only response was Neo turning her notebook over, to the next page. Nora stood, her shoulders lowered, the drawing in her hand. Nora pushed her grimm drawings back into her book, some with corners still bent, and put the text into her bag along with the drawing tools.
Just as Nora was about to reach the door, Neo appeared behind her and grabbed her arm. Neo shook her head and pointed to the clock; Nora wrenched her arm free as she turned to Neo.
"No! You don't get ignore me and then suddenly tell me to stay."
Neo pointed at the clock again. The room showed evidence of their presence throughout, the board, Nora's marked desk, upturned desk, the text on the teacher's desk, and Nora's book on the backwards desk against Neo's small tidy area.
Nora was quickly to retort: "I don't care!"
Neo reached for Nora's hands once more, "W-we'll h-ha-have to b-be h-here ag-gain i-if w-we don't sssstay."
Nora's hands moved from Neo's reach and she stepped closer to her shorter teammate. Her words betrayed an insecurity that her posture hid, "Then why couldn't you just study with me? You won't care anyway, you love being locked up in this room don't you? It is easy for you to be still, and quiet, and not get into trouble isn't it?!"
Neo stepped back, bumping into a desk. She disappeared and reappeared with the desk between them.
"It isn't my fault. All of us are in trouble, not just me. It is the whole team that is getting punished because we all did stuff." Nora said as she picked up a desk, "But the most you interacted with me is to chuck stuff at my head!" The desk hit a Neo with pink and white eyes, which shattered, leaving the desk to hit the center column of seats. "Is this the game you wanted to play!?"
Neo stood two desks away from the back wall, wanting to distance herself from her fellow captive but unwilling to put her back against the wall. Nora easily jumped to the next aisle, stepping closer to Neopolitan. In response, she picked up a chair and held it between the two of them, but Nora took another step closer. Neo threw the chair, not as hard as Nora had, but it clattered loudly against the floor when Nora dodged simply by leaning to the side.
When Nora stood back up, much to Neo's surprise, she was smiling. With a giggle she picked up another chair.
"N-no-nora . . ."
Neo ducked as a chair flew over her and hit the wall; she rolled under a desk to the next aisle, then over another to where she had sat for much of the last two hours.
"Why are you running? Aren't you going to throw something else at me?" asked Nora as she looked at the desks around her. "This is a lot more fun than studying." She picked a desk and lifted it over her head.
Neo stood up straight and froze, her gaze only on the desk. "D-d-don't N-no-nora . . . " she pleaded, her voice soft.
Nora launched the desk at her teammate, it shattered her and the window behind it. Neo was crouched to the side, having dove with a roll from behind her illusion.
"THE FUCK N-NORA!?" shouted Neopolitan, not yet sure she was ready to stand up. "TH- FUCKING w-WIND- DAMNIT WHY THE HELL DID y-y-YOU h-hav-AHHH!"
Needless to say, Nora was taken aback by this outburst. "Neo?" she asked with caution, "What happened to your stutter?" Not the most important question of the moment, but the first she could form properly.
Neo caught her breath, standing up while attempting to pull down her anger from her inability to say the words she wanted. "I-it da-doessn't ha-ha-hap-pen with v-v-vul-vul-FUCKITY FUCKING HELL . . . wor-words."
"Oooooohhh." responded Nora, dragging out the sound with a slow nod. One of her feet remained behind her, ready to pivot and run at another outburst.
Neo swung her arms open, first turning sideways and swinging them toward the hole that was once a window, then spinning to gesture the entire room. Nora followed the movements with her eyes, taking in the fixable damage of misplaced furniture, the erasable whiteboard, and the window outside of their abilities to undo.
"Oh, right, we're here because we were breaking too much stuff, huh? Well, what do we do now?" asked Nora, unsure as to how to fix this problem.
Neo shrugged, slid into her chair, and let her head fall to her book with her arms around, shielding her from any visual of the room. It was not long before the scraping of chairs, desks, and even Nora picking up her two remaining books carved through the defeated silence Neopolitan started. She a vaguely aware of Nora putting something in her own bag too. Most surprising, though, was the crinkling of glass being knocked away. Does she really think they won't notice if the cracks aren't visible?