A/N: The Ultimate Written Exam is here! Make sure you read my A/N at the end of this chapter!
((and, as xxalesanaxx pointed out, there was a reference to Soul in here that referred to him as Maka's meister, not wepon. It's fixed now!))
"I'm sorry, but I can't study any more without coffee." Mina said.
"I'll have a tea." Stitches said. Stitches loathed coffee. Although, both of her parents seemed to have an infatuation with the caffeinated beverage. It was just something they shared. Stitches never cottoned on to the idea.
"Of course you will." Mina said. Joseph stood up after his now-girlfriend, walking over to the kitchenette and jumping up onto the counter.
"Get your attractive, toned ass off the counter." Mina said. Joseph smirked, his black hair falling over his blue eyes.
"Only if you get your sexy, luscious lips over here." Joseph smirked. Thomas and Stitches turned to each other and nodded knowingly.
They, in unison, began to make retching noises as Joseph's lips made contact with Mina's. After a couple of seconds, Mina scowled at Thomas and Stitches.
"Unless you want me to spit in your beverages, I suggest you shut the hell up." Mina said.
The two sitting on the carpet stopped their noises, and, as the kettle had not yet boiled, Mina went back to kissing Joseph. Stitches could only just barely tolerate the scene before her, but when Joseph's hand slipped below the equator and onto Mina's backside, that was it.
"Alright, that's quite enough." Stitches said, jumping to her feet, running over to Joseph and grabbing his ear, pulling him off the counter.
"Ow, ow, ow, ow…" Joseph said, jumping off the counter and walking over to where Thomas and Stitches sat.
"Stitches!" Mina exclaimed.
"The kettle's boiled." Stitches smirked. Mina scowled slightly, turning back to the counters.
"Come on, Stitches. Who's writing the exam? You're in with everyone at Shibusen. Can't you find who's writing the exam and just use those big ol' gold eyes of yours to get the answers?" Joseph asked. Stitches furrowed her brow.
"I don't know who's writing the exam. But, before you ask, I do know that it's not my father." Stitches said. Joseph sighed.
"Damn! You could have just gone up to him, blinked your lashes and gone 'Daddy, we've been trying so hard to study, but it's just so hard to continue…'"
"Alright, two things. One, my father would probably stab me if I tried that. Two, would you go up to my father and say that?" Stitches asked. Joseph laughed incredulously.
"No." Joseph smirked.
"That why the hell would I do it?" Stitches asked.
"Well… Because he's your dad!" Joseph said.
"What a convincing argument. Whose sperm hits whose egg shouldn't determine who has to risk death just because you're too lazy to study." Stitches said. Joseph simply smirked.
"Geez, someone's grown a pair." Joseph said, punching Stitches in the arm.
"Well… You'll do fine. Joseph." Stitches said, taking the cup of tea Mina made her into her grasps.
"You didn't spit in this, did you?" Stitches asked.
"No." Mina said, shaking her head and laughing slightly.
The four teenagers sat around for a little while, Thomas and Stitches studying for the Ultimate Written Exam, Joseph and Mina studying the insides of each other's mouths. After another hour of studying, Stitches could no longer keep her eyes open. She was incredibly tired and delirious. She was a lot like her mother in that respect; when Marie was tired, it was like she was drunk.
"I sleepytime on you now, Thomas." Stitches said, flopping down onto the blonde boy. Thomas, taken slightly aback, looked up at Joseph, who was now standing up.
"What do I do?" Thomas mouthed. Joseph smirked and began to play a vulgar game of charades. He bent over an imaginary figure and began thrusting in mid-air. Thomas shot him a glare and looked down at the silver-haired girl.
"Come on, Stitches." Thomas said, sitting the girl up and helping her to her feet. She slumped against the taller boy and held onto him tightly as he walked her into her bedroom, laying her down on her bed.
"You alright here?" Thomas asked. Stitches groaned as she turned over.
"Mmhm." Stitches said. Thomas sighed and pulled away from Stitches, looking on at her sleeping frame.
"Good luck for tomorrow, Stitches." Thomas said, pulling the hair that had fallen over her face away. She sighed contentedly as the blonde haired boy walked out of the room.
"Alright, class! The exam will start in two minutes!" Maka said, the students in the class all fidgeting nervously as their exam papers were laid out in front of them.
Stitches took a deep breath and turned over the paper, writing her full name and her date of birth on the front. She'd studied for this test, she knew all the answers… well, she was pretty sure she did.
After another minute or so, the exam began.
"And… begin!" Maka called out, causing the room to erupt with noises of ruffling papers and clinking pens. Stitches took a deep breath and looked at the first question.
A sound soul resides in a sound _ and sound _.
Stitches sighed and wrote down the answer. She knew that question, as most of the other people in her class probably did as well. She continued down the page, most of the questions relatively easy for her to answer. Partway through the exam, however, something went awry.
"Ouch!" a boy cried. Stitches turned her head and pushed her glasses up over the bridge of her nose to see a brown-haired boy being pulled to the front of the classroom by his ear by Maka. When he got down the front, Maka let go of his ear and crossed her arms.
"Where are they? Come on." she said. The boy sighed and emptied his sleeves of the cheat sheets he had written. Maka sighed.
"My weapon tried to do this when we took the exam." Maka said, scrunching up the cheat sheets.
"What happened to him?" the boy asked.
"He ended up half naked next to a girl who made her exam into a giraffe, a boy who passed out when he couldn't write his name properly, and took advice from a boy who was beaten to within an inch of his life. So, I suggest that you use what little study you did and try and complete your exam without these." Maka said, ripping up the cheat sheets.
The boy turned, defeated, and walked back to his seat. Stitches sighed and looked back down at her test. She'd nearly finished, and she had ten minutes to go.
"I'll just double check…" Stitches said, going through her answers one more time. When she was happy with her answers, she put her pencil down and looked across at Mina for a second.
She was stressing out. Her knuckles were white over her pencil, and she was trembling. Stitches desperately wanted to stand up, go over there and put her arm around Mina, and just try to tell her what to do. But she couldn't.
Stitches turned her head back to the front and closed her eyes slightly. After sitting around for a while, she took a deep breath in as Maka called out.
"One minute to go!" she called.
Stitches heard a gasp which she knew escaped from Mina. She resisted the urge to turn her head, rechecking her exam answers instead. After the final minute was up, the chimes rang. A lot of exasperated cries and relieved sighs rang out, not to mention the slamming of fists and the throwing of pencils. Stitches turned to Mina, who had her head resting on the table and her eyes closed. Stitches slid over to her once she and Mina had their exam papers taken up.
"Mina… Mina, are you alright?" Stitches asked. Mina turned to her and cracked a nervous smile.
"I failed so badly." Mina said, breathily. Stitches sighed and sat down next to Mina.
"No, you didn't." Stitches said.
"You're the smart one." Mina replied. Stitches sighed and rested her arm around Mina's shoulder.
"Come on. Let's go home." Stitches said. Mina smiled slightly.
"Alright, come on." Mina stood up, Stitches grabbing her satchel bag and following afterwards.
"Stitches…holy crap." Mina said, elbowing a shell-shocked Stitches in the side.
The results of the Ultimate Written Exam had been posted three days after the class had taken the exam.
Mina had calmed down about her results somewhat, and had come in at a highly respectable 42nd place out of 150 participants.
Joseph had come in 57th, not being as dumb as everyone thought he was and Thomas had come in 14th. Stitches, however…
"I'm going to pass out." Stitches said, grabbing onto Mina's arm.
"Please don't pass out." Thomas replied.
"I…How did I…Why did I…" Stitches muttered.
"Stitches, you came first!" Joseph exclaimed. Her eyes flicked over the words again.
Shelley Stein – 101 points
"I…I gotta sit down." Stitches said, backing against the wall and sliding down against it.
First. She'd beaten 149 of her peers in the biggest exam of their school lives.
She sat down against the wall and closed her eyes. Mina sat down on one side of her, Thomas on the other, whilst Joseph stood up in front of them. As most of the students made their way along the corridor and out of Shibusen, a familiar face stopped in front of the four.
"Stitches." the woman called. Stitches raised her head to see the expectant eyes of her mother above her.
"Mama…" Stitches began. Marie smiled widely and knelt down in front of Stitches. Stitches sighed.
"Turn away." Stitches said to her friends. They all laughed and obliged, turning away as Marie wrapped her arms around her daughter, suppressing a squeal.
"Well done, baby." Marie whispered, kissing her daughter on the forehead before standing up once more.
"Can we look yet?" Mina asked, her eyes squeezed shut. Stitches smirked.
"Yes." Stitches said, smiling slightly. Marie stood back.
"Well, I'd best be off. Congratulations on your scores, guys." Marie said, before walking off down the corridor. Mina smirked and giggled slightly.
"Mama Mjolnir's proud of you." Mina said. Stitches sighed.
"Well, I think it's nice. No doubt I'll have a call from Ms Martha this afternoon." Thomas said, holding his hand out to Stitches. She smiled and took his grasp, standing to her feet.
"Thanks." Stitches said, brushing her choppy silver tresses out of her face. The four friends walked down the corridor of Shibusen, all pretty happy with how they'd done in the exam.
Stitches, however, was still pretty dumbfounded.
A/N: Come on, Stitches is The Brain. This is her thing!
Okay, so, I was chatting to one of my friends who's reading my stories, and I happened to tell her a couple of little interesting things about the way this story was written, and she said that I should put them into the stories somehow. So, I've decided that I'm going to start putting little factoids at the end of each chapter, just for something else to do. The factoids will generally relate to the chapters in one way or another.
Factoid #1: As we know, names are imperative to taking tests and, moreover, learning of test scores.
Both Stitches and Mina's names are references to seminal horror writings. Stitches, whose real name is Shelley, is named for Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus. Mina is named for Mina Harker, the protagonist of Bram Stoker's Dracula.