Chapter 10

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Disclaimer: Uh… I didn't make up the characters… except for, like, Nix and Tarquin… I BLAME TARQUIN! –pointing–

Tarquin had put up a nice little sign-up sheet for the Tetris tournament. It explained the rules and times concisely.

"Very nice…" Lucrecia commented, looking sarcastically at me. "You're really going through with this?"

"Well… yeah. I figure it'll be fun if nothing else, right? Can't take credit for the signup, though. Tarq made it. It's cute, i'n'it?"

Lucrecia looked a little wary. "Tarquin's involved with this? How did you convince Tarquin to help you?"

"Easy. I've pretty much got him to hate Hojo too, so he decided to help us."

Lucrecia looked worried. "'Convinced him to hate him?' …Was there slander involved?"

"Are you kidding? Tarquin loves you, remember?"

Her expression darkened. "I had noticed."

"So has Vincent."

Lucrecia looked somewhat distressed by this. "Nix, you know Tarquin well… what should I do?"

I rolled my eyes. "We've been over this. Tarq's got a girlfriend to whom he is completely loyal. His behavior towards you is nothing but old-school, old-world flair caught alight by amusement at Vincent's reactions."

Lucrecia looked unconvinced.

"Ok, fine. I'll talk to him." I looked around and noticed that he was gone. "What? He's ditched."

Lucrecia looked around too, apparently equally confused. "I didn't see him leave…"

"Yeah, but nor do you have superpowers. He's sneaky. He's probably with Bella. I'll talk to him later…" I knew he would probably ask me what we had done in class today. I turned to the front of the class to find out for myself.

"Good day, Nix… Er… What did we do in science today?"

"I knew it. I totally called it. I told Lucrecia you'd come begging me for information."

"Yes, well…"

"You were with Belle, weren't you?"

Tarquin looked somewhat guilty. "She has a terribly dull Algebra class and—"

"I think we know eachother too well."

He shook his head.

"Tarq, why are you baiting Vincent?"

He shrugged. "I amuse myself."

I rolled my eyes. "Well, Lucrecia is not ok with it. And anyway, ask Mrs. Barker what we did."

"No! I—" He looked reluctant.

"You're afraid of Mrs. Barker?"

Tarquin glared and changed the subject. "And your little game? How is that?"

I nodded. "Signup's up. I'll see how popular it is, then we'll start."

Tarquin seemed satisfied with this and left to find Belle.

I Turned around to search for Lucrecia, but was promptly accosted by a vividly ranting Noshi. "Nix! Hi!"

"Heya, Noshi. What's up?"

"I heard about your Tetris tournament."

"Yeah?"

"Tarquin told me. He's in my math."

I rolled my eyes. "I thought I was smart in my honors math class, but you're two years ahead… Why do I always end up with smart friends?"

Noshi laughed at me and temporarily re-railed the conversation. "Why are you having the tournament, anyway."

I sighed and folded my arms. "Have you heard of Daryl?"

"Heard of him! 'Have I HEARD of him!'"

"Okay…. Sorry I asked."

"I hate him with the passion of…"

"Millions of combusting super-novas and a half-dozen white dwarf stars?"

"Yes! And many other things like that."

I stared at her passionate smoldering for a moment. Even I didn't hate him that much. "What's your issue with 'im?"

"He's evil."

"That's all the coherence I'm gonna get out of ya, innit?"

"Yep, pretty much."

I chuckled as Noshi continued her rant and settled back, listening.

I sauntered in the back door of the math class, expecting to be the life of chaos, as usual, but found myself scrambling to develop a new plan of action at the sight of an uncomfortably familiar figure in the front left of the classroom. Deciding upon espionage as a potentially fun plan, I quietly slipped to my desk several rows behind him without my usual ruckus. When role was called, I worried I might be found out, but Daryl seemed too busy with paper on his desk to notice me.

About 20 minutes into class we were supposed to be working, but most of the people in class were chattering instead. Perfect cover, I thought. I put my backpack on my desk as a shield, got out a stack of sticky notes, scrawled 'Hello!' on one of them, crumpled it, and lobbed it across the classroom at Hojo. He started when the paper landed in front of him surprised out of a deep focus. He glared around angrily for a culprit.

I hunkered lower behind my backpack, out of his line of sight, smirking as I waited for a reaction. A bit later, he uncrumpled the note and looked around angrily in reaction to the message. I was ready with another crumpled note. This one said 'Over here!' but I timed the throw so that he could not have seen where I was throwing from. The note landed on his desk without too much incident, but I sulked behind my backpack the rest of class so as not to alert attention…

I was in English the next day, flipping through my sticky notes. I had pre-set the phrases on them for easy re-loading next math class.

"Nix, what are you doing?" Um, yeah. Lucrecia was in the class with me.

"I'm… uh… prepping something…?" Bad move. The suspicious tone perked up Lucrecia's parental instincts.

"Nix, really. What are you doing?"

"I'm writing on sticky notes what's it to you!"

"You're acting suspicious enough for me to think that it's something I ought to know about."

I glared at her. "You wanna know? You really wanna know!" I gave her no time to respond. "Fine. Hojo got transferred into my math class."

"Really? Wait—" She looked surprised. "What, your math?"

I looked at her with a slightly dark expression. "Um, I'm in the accelerated math class."

"Oh… Wait, really?"

I stared at her for a moment, searching for a hint of sarcasm. I found none, so I folded my arms. "Listen, if you're gonna insult me—"

She seemed to realize then what she had sounded like and put a hand over her mouth. "Oh! Sorry, Nix! I didn't mean—"

I rolled my eyes and tried to return to working on the assignment.

"But what does it have to do with sticky notes?"

I winced as she got back to the point I had been avoiding. "Well…" I scratched the back of my neck awkwardly. "See, he doesn't realize I'm in the class."

She shook her head. "So, what, you're—"

"Being my usual obnoxious self, yeah. I won't do anything cruel, promise."

She didn't seem to totally believe me.

I opened the door of the classroom, looked around, saw Mrs. Barker, and nodded satisfiedly.

She gave me a quizzical look before I ducked back out of the room. When I returned dragging Lucrecia by the wrist, Mrs. Barker's expression had shifted from mild curiosity to genuine fear for my sanity.

"Hi, Mrs. Barker!" I said, waving, "We're bringing the stuff for the Tetris battles!"

"Okay…" She said quietly, watching Vincent enter the room wreathed with all the wires required to hook up my silver-colored PS2.

Mrs. Barker was rubbing her temple. "What have I gotten myself into?"

The Tetris tournament was supposed to start that day, so I had brought what was needed. I noticed that several people who had signed up were there. I took the stuff from Vincent and noticed that everyone was looking at me.

"Um… you're in charge here, Nix." Lucrecia reminded me.

"Uh… yeah. I know, yeah…" I raised my voice slightly. "Uh… so. Who all's here for the tournament?"

Pretty much everyone raised their hands.

"Why else would we be here?" Lucrecia reminded me from her seat in the front of the room.

"Right. Yeah… So…. Um, it's a knockout style tournament, so, you lose, you're out of the game. Sound ok?"

General murmurs of agreement.

"We—Euh… Tarquin and I—" I noticed uncomfortably that Tarquin wasn't there. "…have three duels planned for today and if you aren't involved in those three, you can leave. But you can stay and watch. If you want… ya know… so long as you don't rat on us or anything." I nodded, gaining confidence. "So, first round is me versus Citra, then Ryder and Harrison, and Darek versus Sammy." The named persons reacted, generally, sizing each other up. "So, those six meet back here at lunch unless your round is over, dong-ma? Looks like… that's Citra and me up." I grinned sheepishly, then turned to set up the projector.

I reached up at the projector vainly, wires in hand. I was too short. "Zack!" I snapped, instantly targeting one of the tallest people in the room. "Plug in the PlayStation!"

Zack reached up, able to see the projector easily. I gave him the tri-headed stereo/video cable. Zack looked at the projector with a glazed expression. "So… What am I supposed to do?"

"The red thingy goes in the red slot and the yellow goes in the yellow slot and white with white."

Zack's brow furrowed "… I still don't get it."

"Unplug the white thing." He did. "Now plug the white thing I handed you in where the first one was." He did and the sound came on through one of the two speakers.

Zack's eyes widened. "Oh, I get it now!"

Several people, including myself, put hands over their faces in disgrace.

"Aerith, your boyfriend is pathetic…"

She folded her arms amiably and glared slightly as I set up the controllers.

Citra, my longtime friend from elementary, was standing at the side of the desk hesitantly. I turned on the projector to reveal the splash-screen of an old-school-style Tetris game with an innovative multiplayer mode. I tagged into the game as Player 1 and handed the other controller to Citra as I sat next to him on the table, smiling slightly. "You ready to get your butt kicked?"

Citra tagged in as Player 2. "What? No way. You're going down!"

The game started. "Oh, you're so sure!"

Blocks started falling onto each of our play fields. "Yeah! I play Tetris on my phone for hours when I'm bored."

I pressed keypad down to drop the block quickly into place. "Hmh. Only 'cause you've got nothing better to do most times!"

"How'd you do that!"

"Do what?"

"Drop the little… blocky… thing… like that?"

"I'm magic."

Citra growled softly.

I dropped a line-shaped block alongside a solid mass, executing a four-line combo.

"How'd you do that?"

"I thought you played Tetris all the time?"

Citra's stack of colorful blocks was growing. "I… I do! But…"

"But apparently not enough!"

Citra's blocks hit the top of the screen. The game declared me the winner with much fanfare.

"Haha! I'm on to the next round."

"Great, now get this stuff put away. Class starts in thirty seconds." Mrs. Barker was glaring at me.

Later, at lunch, the duels resumed and—surprisingly—took the whole lunch break, so I ate in the science room and somehow convinced some people to join me.

"What's your guess?" I asked quietly.

Vincent scoffed slightly. "Seriously, Harrison doesn't have a chance."

"Why not?"

"Ryder has… telepathy or something. And Harrison's a pretty boy."

I shot an appraising glance at Harrison. "Right, I won't deny Harrison's pretty, but he's not dumb either."

"What are you talking about?" Lucrecia had noticed the conspiratorial whispering.

I grinned with an intentionally guilty air. "Uh… I was just playing bookie."

She glared at me.

"I—She—Damn, Nix… It's not true."

"I know."

Harrison succumbed to the quickly falling blocks and the game declared Ryder the winner. He stood and shook Harrison's hand, the humility in his gestures not quite reaching his eyes.

"Darek and Sammy, you're up." I said more loudly, addressing them. Both cordially approached the desk where the players had traditionally been sitting. Darek chose to stand.

"Darek. No question." Vincent said.

"Agreed. He actually has telepathy."

Lucrecia looked slightly bewildered, Vincent looked annoyed.

I was right in the end, though.

I sauntered into math again, totally aware of my promise to Lucrecia not to go over-board. Not that I would, right? I mean, I was only chucking sticky-notes. Not overboard.

Consoled, I sat at the back of the room again, putting my bag on my desk again. I got out the sticky notes, carefully watching Hojo. He seemed more wary than he should be in a class like this, but then again some mysterious and annoying poltergeist had been pelting him with sticky-notes all last class. I'd probably be a touch jumpy too.

The teacher turned his back.

Hojo uncrumpled the paper fairly immediately.

"Hello, again!"

A/N: I'm so friking dedicated to resurrecting this. I sacrificed watching the new MythBusters last night to work on finishing this chapter. Yeah.

Oh! A bunch of characters are renamed third-party cameos from other popular genres. Feel free to guess who they are if you're interested.